A husband calling his wife a prostitute would amount to ‘grave provocation’ and the death caused in such an instance would be punishable as culpable homicide not amounting to murder, the Supreme Court has ruled.
In an eccentric judgement, SC absolved a woman of murdering her husband on the ground of “grave provocation”. The top court held that the murder was committed in a fit of rage because the victim had called the wife and their daughter a “prostitute”.
The bench of judges comprising justices MM Shantanagoudar and Dinesh Maheshwari converted the conviction under Section 302 IPC (murder) to Section 304 Part I IPC (culpable homicide not amounting to murder), and said: “The deceased provoked the accused by uttering the word ‘prostitute’. In our society, no lady would like to hear such a word from her husband. Most importantly, she would not be ready to hear such a word against her daughters. The incident is a result of a sudden and grave provocation by the deceased.”
The apex bench sentenced the woman and another co-accused/accomplice, with ten-year rigorous imprisonment. If convicted of murder, the minimum sentence would have been a “life imprisonment”.
The case dates back to 2002 and was reported from Ooty. According to the police, the deceased husband suspected that the co-accused Nawaz(then 22) was having an affair not only with his wife but also with their elder daughter. On October 20, 2002, around 9 am, a heated altercation broke down between the couple. The husband not only called her a “prostitute” but also accused her of turning their 17-year old elder daughter into one.
Nawaz, a resident of the same building intervened and tried to pacify the situation. When the husband refused to budge, Nawaz slapped him, which made the victim unconscious. Later, both wife and Nawaz strangulated the victim to death, with the help of a towel. In order to conceal the evidence, the duo burnt his body.
The accused were convicted on the basis of an extrajudicial confession made by the ‘wife’ before a school teacher after 40 days of this incident. The two accused approached the apex court, after a trial court in Tamil Nadu awarded them life terms and Madras High Court upheld the sentence.
“Everything occurred in the fraction of a minute. Since the accused, because of the aforesaid conduct of the deceased calling accused No. 1 (wife) and her daughter as prostitute, was deprived of the power of self-control,” said the top court.