Don’t RIP: Dead man convicted

Ashok Sahane, 30, who passed away five years ago, must be turning in his grave. A judgement by the Bombay high court wants him back from the dead.

Eleven years after his second wife challenged his one-year conviction for his first wife’s death,  the high court has pronounced him guilty. Sahane had died while his appeal against the conviction  was pending in the high court.

Last week, justice JH Bhatia upheld a judgment of the Nashik sessions court, which had in 1999 found Sahane guilty of the death of his first wife Sangita. He had been sentenced to a year’s rigorous imprisonment for dowry harassment.

Sangita had informed her parents about this. On the basis of an FIR registered by Sangita’s parents, the police had then arrested Sahane, his mother and sister-in-law under section 306 (abetment) and 498-A (dowry harassment). Although  his mother and sister-in-law were acquitted, Sahane was convicted for a year for which he filed an appeal in the HC in 1999, challenging the sessions court’s order.

After Sahane’s death, his second wife Manda filed an application in HC to continue the case. Representing the appellant, advocate Ganesh Gole argued that the police had not recorded Sangita’s statement before her death and that there was not enough evidence against Sahane to prove him guilty of harassment for dowry.

Additional public prosecutor Anuradha Mane, on the other hand, relied on the evidence given by Sangita’s mother, who had admitted that she was being treated cruelly. She had even claimed that Ashok had demanded Rs15,000 for buying a motorcycle.

Hearing the appeal last week, justice Bhatia ruled that there was enough evidence against Sahane and upheld the conviction.