A False Demand for Dower

Question: A wife has filed a claim against her husband stating: give me a divorce, and pay me my dower of one house, dowry items worth one and a half crore rupees, and maintenance of twenty-five thousand rupees. Tell me what I should do.

Answer: I am telling you from my own experience — consider this, and your problem will be resolved. Appoint a competent lawyer, and you must dictate every single detail of your case to your lawyer. A good lawyer is one where you keep talking and he keeps writing, because there are countless cases where, once he draws up your draft, your whole picture comes out clearly. The wife filed a case that I should be granted divorce on the ground of the husband's cruel behaviour; I was given a house in writing as my dower, that should be given; a long, extensive list of dowry items worth one and a half crore rupees was given; for maintenance she demanded twenty-five thousand rupees a month. Dowry items of one and a half crore — this claim was filed against the husband; the husband came to me. Now I asked him everything — he said we don't want to keep even a single needle of hers, we want to return it, but this claim of one-and-a-half-crore dowry items is completely false. Now the key point was this — bringing the court out of this trance was hard work: that this list of one-and-a-half-crore-rupee dowry items is false, whereas this dowry is worth two to two-and-a-half lakh rupees. Now a person demands one and a half crore — how much will he come down to — he'll settle for fifty lakh, forty lakh. Now the actual situation was that that dowry was worth two, two-and-a-half, three lakh rupees. The key focus was how to bring it down from one and a half crore. How do we take one and a half crore out of the court's thinking? This is completely baseless — for this an entire plan had to be built, for this I had to hold countless meetings, calling in the client; in the initial stage nothing was making sense, the written statement in reply also had to go — what to do? I asked, brother, how big is your house — he said four marlas. I asked who lives there — he said, I live there, my two brothers live there, my parents live there. Both brothers are married; on the ground floor I lived in one room, apart from that the kitchen is shared; on the second and third floors both brothers live; downstairs I live in one room. I asked how big is the girl's family's house — they said, sir, theirs is also four or five marlas. I asked, who lives there? — he said her two married brothers live there, one unmarried brother lives there, the parents live there, an uncle of theirs lives there with his family.

I said, bring me your list under oath on the Qur'an. That was a list of dowry items that any normal father, any normal parents, give to their daughter. I attached that list of dowry items with the written statement in reply and prepared my reply, verifying every single point in it. One thing I failed to get the trial court to understand — though this point of mine was accepted at the High Court — was that the house mentioned in the marriage contract (nikah nama) was mentioned only to the extent of her right to reside there — that as long as you remain married, you have the right to live in that house — but the trial court and the appellate court took the view that no, this house had been given to her outright. The High Court accepted this as well, and after accepting it, the Supreme Court accepted it too — the Supreme Court upheld it, the Supreme Court formally debated this. Now, when I put this before the court — a person living in a five-marla house is sending his daughter, along with dowry items worth one and a half crore rupees, into a house that is also five marlas. He is sending one-and-a-half-crore-rupee dowry items into a five-marla house where two married sons and the parents already live, plus himself. The trial court accepted this — as a first step I got them out of that [one-and-a-half-crore figure]. This point was also accepted by the plaintiff during the recording of evidence, and after accepting it — yes, we live in a five-marla house with this many people, yes, they live in a three-to-four-marla house with this many people — so where did that one-and-a-half-crore dowry go? She also says she got only one room to live in, she also says there was no store room there, she also says there was no drawing room there. In a house with no drawing room, no store room, how can one-and-a-half-crore-rupee dowry items possibly fit there? Now the matter did not stop even there — having established this, then, in the setting-aside proceedings, I filed an application stating that my client is prepared to state on oath that the list of dowry items he has attached and produced in court is all he has, not even a needle more — either take my oath, or let this lady come and take an oath that no, this dowry list [mine] is false and the list I have given is true. When this application went in, they backed off and said, decide this on merits. To the extent of the dowry items, the trial court said that the list given by the husband is correct, but as for the dower, he should give the house that was put in her name. Now that house had no existence — my client was not the owner of even one inch of it. The house that was referred to belonged to my father, and the whole family lived in it. We went to the appellate court; the appellate court accepted our position. Then came an important turning point that happens in courts, no need to worry — the trial court's decision was reinstated. We went to the High Court, and then the High Court accepted this, and after that the Supreme Court also debated it — that nowhere in the marriage contract is it written that this house would be received as a gift, or that this house would be received as dower. The whole purpose of narrating this case is that you should stay informed, you should know what your case actually is. If a case is filed and lakhs, crores of rupees are demanded, you should not panic immediately — you should also know your own facts.