Common, Thus Excused? Recent Verdicts on Violence Against Women

In the complex landscape of the Indian judicial system, a disturbing trend has emerged. The judiciary is increasingly mitigating punishment based on the frequency of a crime. Recent legal developments have seen courts reduce life sentences for dowry death convictions down to 10 years or less. The rationale frequently cited by legal benches is that such incidents are "not very rare or uncommon," and therefore do not always warrant the extreme penalty of life imprisonment.

This logic is not merely a technicality; it is a profound moral inversion that threatens the foundation of justice for vulnerable citizens. By tethering the severity of a sentence to the prevalence of the crime, the justice system risks signalling that if a heinous act becomes common enough, it is no longer an exception deserving maximum deterrence. Instead, it becomes a societal standard, and punishment is adjusted downward to reflect that grim new normal.

A Law in Transition, a Gap That Persists

The legal architecture surrounding domestic violence and gender-based crimes recently transitioned from the Indian Penal Code (IPC) to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023. Under this regime, dowry death is addressed under Section 80 of the BNS, which mirrors the provisions of the former Section 304B of the IPC. This section specifically applies to unnatural deaths occurring within seven years of marriage where there is evidence of cruelty or harassment related to dowry demands soon before the death.

Complementing this, Section 85 of the BNS addresses cruelty by a husband or his relatives, maintaining the framework once governed by Section 498A of the IPC.

Despite these provisions, the system faces significant hurdles. Conviction rates remain a point of contention, influenced by investigation delays, evidentiary gaps, and the frequent turning of witnesses. While the law places the burden of proof on the accused in specific dowry-related prosecutions under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, the practical application often results in lengthy trials. This erodes the efficacy of the law for genuine victims while creating prolonged legal hardship for all parties involved.

Courts have repeatedly observed that while the statutory framework raises a presumption of guilt upon proof of cruelty, it does not mandate life imprisonment in every instance, leading to judicial discretion that increasingly favours shorter terms.

When ‘Common’ Becomes a Mitigating Factor

Consider the case involving a woman and her daughter who died by suicide after years of constant demands for money and a share in ancestral property. When cases like this are treated with diminished severity because they occur frequently in society, it creates a dangerous precedent. We tell the public that the tragedy of a woman losing her life due to relentless greed is a routine affair.

When the threshold for exceptional circumstances is lowered to include the sheer ubiquity of the crime, the law ceases to be a beacon of reform. It becomes a mirror of societal failings where the frequency of a crime dictates the mercy shown to the perpetrator rather than the gravity of the act itself.

This culture of minimisation extends beyond dowry deaths into broader categories of gender-based violence. In a separate judicial development, the Patna High Court set aside a conviction for attempted rape, ruling that the physical actions of the accused specifically pressing a woman's chest and attempting to remove her clothing amounted only to outraging her modesty. By categorising such an invasive, violent act as a lesser offense, the court employed a narrow interpretation that ignored the terror and violation experienced by the victim.

Historically, dowry death and sexual violence were viewed as barbaric betrayals of human life, requiring the full weight of the law to eradicate. When courts observe that such deaths are common, or when they parse physical assaults to avoid applying stringent rape laws, they invoke judicial discretion in ways that shift the philosophy of justice away from protecting the vulnerable.

What These Rulings Signal to Society

The danger lies not just in individual rulings, but in the cumulative message they send to the collective conscience. When a High Court decides that the commonality of a crime justifies reduced accountability, it signals that the law is not meant to transform society, but to simply pace itself alongside society's worst habits. We are witnessing a slow surrender of legal idealism to pragmatic apathy. If judges see thousands of dowry deaths and conclude that punishment should be softened because the system cannot manage such volume, they fail the primary duty of the judiciary: to provide an uncompromising standard of justice regardless of surrounding chaos.

In rural areas, where dowry is often viewed as a mandatory social tax rather than a crime, these judgments act as a validating force. They whisper to abusers that they are not outliers in a society that rejects their violence, but merely participants in a regrettable yet normalized custom. By doing so, the courts actively participate in maintaining the very patriarchal structures they are constitutionally bound to dismantle. We must ask if we are creating a legal ecosystem where the frequency of a woman's suffering serves as the primary mechanism for her abuser's eventual leniency.

A Pattern, Not an Isolated Incident

The Patna High Court's ruling is not a solitary lapse in judicial reasoning. It sits inside a wider, worrying pattern. In March 2025, the Allahabad High Court held that pulling a minor girl's pyjama string and grabbing her breasts did not amount to attempted rape, and could at best be classified as aggravated sexual assault under the POCSO Act, a charge that carries a lighter sentence.

Both rulings were flagged before the Supreme Court, which took suo motu cognizance, set aside the Allahabad ruling, and, during the Patna case's hearing, CJI Surya Kant openly criticised the reasoning, saying judges need to research more before passing such verdicts, and ordered new sensitivity guidelines for courts and police nationwide.

This matters for two reasons. First, it confirms that the instinct to narrow the definition of rape or attempted rape down to a checklist of specific physical acts, penetration, medical corroboration, an unambiguous overt act, is recurring, not incidental.

Second, it shows that when the apex court is forced to engage with these rulings directly, it pushes back hard. The question this raises is why such reasoning keeps reaching the level of a High Court judgment in the first place, and why it takes public outrage and Supreme Court intervention each time to correct it, rather than the principle being self-evident to every bench from the outset.

The Slippery Slope this Logic Creates

Consider the logical extension of this logic. What happens to other recurring social evils? If cases of witch-hunting, land grabbing of single women, or superstitious violence occur with distressing frequency, will they too be afforded similar leniency under the banner of "volume"? By making punishment commensurate with frequency, the judiciary tells potential perpetrators that the system is fatigued. It suggests that if enough people commit a crime, the legal framework will stop treating it as a grave threat to social order.

This approach creates a perverse incentive structure. For individuals driven by greed, entitlement, or dominance, a ten-year sentence or a downgraded charge is a manageable risk. It suggests that a woman's life and bodily autonomy can be bartered. Furthermore, this trend ignores the psychological impact on victims and society at large. When families see perpetrators walking free after a mere decade, faith in the sanctity of life erodes.

Justice should never be a reflection of how often a tragedy occurs; it must be the standard against which we measure the society we aspire to build. Sentencing must reflect absolute intolerance for gendered violence. When the law starts accommodating the frequency of a crime, it abandons its role as a protector and becomes an enabler—co-signing the very culture it was designed to eradicate.

Holding the Line: What Justice Demands

Crimes rooted in deep-seated misogyny and greed cannot be treated with the flexible discretion reserved for isolated errors in judgment. When courts cite the frequency of a crime to mitigate punishment, or parse physical violence down to minor offenses, the law abandons its duty. It turns into an enabler, reassuring perpetrators that they are merely participants in a common trend rather than individuals accountable for severe violations.

Reducing a sentence because a crime is widespread is a failure of judicial imagination. Failing to stop a crime in the past does not justify accommodating it in sentencing guidelines today. Diluting penalties for dowry deaths and sexual assault directly co-signs the culture that produces them. These are not routine statistics. These are grave human rights violations demanding the full weight of the law.

The judiciary stands at a crossroads. It can allow the volume of violence to dictate leniency, or it can reaffirm the sanctity of life by matching sentences to the gravity of harm. The future of women's safety depends on holding this line, ensuring the law acts as an unyielding shield rather than a passive observer.

The writer is a PhD scholar in Journalism and Mass Communication at Utkal University, Odisha. The views are personal.