Bahu loses jewellery as saas has receipts of their purchase

A bride may lose out on the jewellery gifted to her during marriage if she is not careful enough to keep proof of their ownership.

A saas-bahu tiff in the Bombay high court between Aruna Bhatkar, 51, and her daughter-in-law, Shubhda, 32, over streedhan —jewellery given to a woman at the time of her marriage — concluded recently with the mother-in-law emerging winner. Shubhda lost because she could not show receipts of purchase of the jewellery.

Vikhroli resident Aruna filed a first information report (FIR) against her daughter-in-law who left her matrimonial home with the jewellery. Shubhda married Aruna’s son, Avadhut, on March 24, 2006.

However, soon after the marriage, Shubhda found that she was unable to get along with her new family. So, she left her in-laws’ home and went back to Surat.

That Shubhda had left with the jewellery came to light a couple of years later.

Aruna needed some jewellery to attend a marriage ceremony and found that a mangalsutra and six gold bangles, worth
over Rs1 lakh, were missing from the house.

Aruna asked Avadhut to ask his wife about the jewellery, and came to know that Shubhda had left with the jewellery on the advice of her sister and brother-in-law. On July 19, 2007, Aruna filed an FIR against Shubhda under sections 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), 506 (criminal intimidation), 504 (intentional insult to invoke breach of peace) and 507 (criminal intimidation by anonymous communication).

After the police seized the jewellery from Shubhda, she filed an application before a metropolitan magistrate, seeking interim custody of her streedhan. But the court granted its custody to Aruna as she had receipts for the purchase of the ornaments in her name.

A sessions court reversed the order, stating that the ornaments were given to Shubhda as streedhan, and her marriage photographs were evidence for the same.

In the high court, justice JH Bhatia observed that the daughter-in-law had nothing except the photographs to show that the jewellery was hers.

“On the basis of the photographs, it cannot be decided whether the ornaments were given to her as marriage gift, or they were simply given to her for use at the time of marriage,” the court order stated.

Granting interim custody of the ornaments to the mother-in-law, the high court struck down the sessions court order, saying that that Aruna had documentary evidence of ownership of the ornaments.