Biju Janata Dal Lok Sabha MP Bhartruhari Mahtab, his son and wife were on Wednesday booked for alleged dowry harassment in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal city, PTI reported.
The first information report against Mahtab’s family was based on a complaint filed by his daughter-in-law Sakshi, who is from Bhopal.
The woman claimed that her family gave Rs 1.5 crore to her in-laws when she got married in 2016, but they kept demanding more money, the Hindustan Times reported. She alleged that her husband and in-laws tortured her and threw her out of their home in Cuttack in Odisha.
Police officer Ajeeta Nayar said the woman had approached a court in 2018 and it had directed her in-laws to let her stay at their home in Delhi. “But when Sakshi went there, they did not even open the gate of the house for her,” Nayar told the newspaper. “Despite repeated attempts when Mahtab’s family did not accept her, she filed the police complaint.”
Mahtab and his family were charged under provisions of the Dowry Prohibition Act and Sections 506 (criminal intimidation) and 498A (subjecting a woman to cruelty) of the Indian Penal Code, PTI reported.
The MP denied the accusations. “The husband and wife hardly stayed together for four to five days,” he said, according to the Hindustan Times. “She has been staying in Bhopal for the last four years. The dowry harassment case looks like an afterthought and nothing like what has been alleged happened.”
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