New Delhi. The Supreme Court has given a ruling that a woman is the sole owner of her stridhan. This includes gold jewellery and other items given by her parents at the time of marriage. The Supreme Court said that after divorce, the woman’s father has no right to demand those gifts back from her former in-laws. P Veerabhadra Rao’s daughter was married in December 1999 and after marriage both the husband and wife moved to the US. After 16 years of marriage, the daughter filed for divorce. The Louis County Circuit Court in Missouri granted the divorce by mutual consent in February 2016. Property and financial matters were settled between the two parties through a separation agreement.
After this, the woman got married again in May 2018. Three years later, P Veerabhadra Rao filed an FIR in Hyderabad against his daughter’s former in-laws to return her Stridhan. The woman’s in-laws approached the Telangana High Court to quash the FIR, but they failed. Then they appealed to the Supreme Court against the High Court order. A bench of Justice JK Maheshwari and Justice Sanjay Karol dismissed the case against the in-laws. The Supreme Court said that the father has no right to demand his daughter’s Stridhan back, as it was entirely his. Justice Karol, while writing the judgment, said that ‘the generally accepted rule, which has been judicially recognized, is that the woman has full right over Stridhan. The court is clear regarding the sole right of the woman (wife or ex-wife, as the case may be) to be the sole owner of Stridhan. The husband has no rights, and then it must necessarily be concluded that when the daughter is alive, healthy and fully capable of taking decisions like recovery of her stridhan, the father also has no rights. The Supreme Court bench said that ‘the purpose of criminal proceedings is to bring the wrongdoer to justice. It is not a means of taking revenge or retribution against those with whom the complainant may have enmity.’ Another factor against the father was that he initiated criminal proceedings for recovery of ‘stridhan’ more than two decades after the marriage, five years after the Talas and three years after his daughter’s remarriage.