Killing wife in drunken state not mitigates but multiplies its seriousness: Delhi Court

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court refused bail to a man who allegedly killed his wife and argued before the court that he was heavily drunk at the time.

The court observed in the order dated January 16, 2025 that killing wife in the spur of the moment at the drunken state ‘does not mitigate the seriousness of the offence but rather multiplies it,’ The Indian Express reported.

Kuldeep Singh is accused of murdering his wife Bharti Singh on June 17, 2021, two months after their marriage, over unfulfilled dowry demands.

It followed after her father refused to cow down to his demands to sell their land and give him the money.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma termed the defence’s argument ‘not only unacceptable but also shocking’.

The courted observed that the mindset that compels daughters to “try and adjust” and “endure suffering” in matrimonial homes “emboldens perpetrators”.

Arrested on June 18, 2021, Kuldeep, who is facing charges of murder under section 302 and dowry death, has been in custody for over three years now.

Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma recorded: ‘To trivialise a case of murder on the ground that the accused and the victim, being husband and wife, had an altercation and therefore, the husband being drunk at the spur of the moment, had killed her, is not only unacceptable but also shocking.’

The court also pointed out that the victim could not have thought that the man she was married to would kill her after having alcohol, ‘just because her parents did not agree to sell their land – a land which was theirs, and not of the accused, which he was demanding as a matter of right.’

Going further, the court made it clear that ‘law does not give right to any person to kill another, and to try to carve out a separate category and plea to consider a case on a different footing.’