The Almora district court has acquitted a woman in her 20s who had been jailed for six months in 2022 after her mother-in-law accused her of attempting to kill her 3-month-old daughter and neglecting to breastfeed the child. The court found the prosecution’s case “full of doubts” and ordered her release, stating, “No mother would harbor such cruelty to end the life of her own offspring.”
The accused, Parul, married Shivam Dikshit in 2020 after they fell in love, despite opposition from his mother, Snehlata. Two years later, Parul gave birth to a baby girl. Three months after the child’s birth, Snehlata filed a police complaint, accusing her daughter-in-law of attempting to harm the infant.
An FIR was filed based on Snehlata’s complaint, and Parul was sent to judicial custody for six months before being granted bail on January 28, 2023. The infant was placed in a government children’s home on the orders of the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) and was reunited with Parul after her release.
During the trial, the court identified several inconsistencies in the prosecution’s case. It noted that the FIR had been filed belatedly, with no satisfactory explanation for the delay. The court also pointed out that while the police questioned the couple’s neighbors, the prosecution failed to produce them as witnesses, weakening its case.
Terming the allegations as baseless, the court stated that the matter seemed to stem from a “domestic dispute.” It added, “Since the husband of the accused was unemployed and habitually inebriated, there might have been some dispute between the two women over a demand for money, as the complainant is a government nurse. But to claim that the accused might have tried to kill her own child is a baseless allegation.” The court further emphasized that the prosecution failed to present any evidence supporting the claim that Parul had ill intentions toward her daughter, describing the entire story as doubtful.
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