The Supreme Court has ruled that a husband has no control over his wife’s ‘stridhan‘ (woman’s property). The top court said that while he may use it during the time of his distress, he has a moral obligation to return it to his wife.

A bench of justices Sanjiv Khanna and Dipankar Datta said stridhan property does not become a joint property of the wife and the husband, and the husband has no title or independent dominion over the property as its owner. “Properties gifted to a woman before marriage, at the time of marriage or at the time of bidding farewell or thereafter are her stridhan properties. It is her absolute property with all rights to dispose at her own pleasure,” the apex court said.

“The husband has no control over her stridhan property. He may use it during the time of his distress but nonetheless, he has a moral obligation to restore the same or its value to his wife,” the top court  added.

In this case, the court directed a man to pay Rs 25 lakh to a woman in return for her ‘lost’ gold.

The woman, in this case, claimed that 89 sovereigns of gold were gifted to her by her family at the time of marriage. Additionally, after the wedding, her father gave a cheque for Rs 2 lakh to her husband. The wife further claimed that on the first night of their marriage, the husband took custody of all her jewellery and entrusted the same to his mother under the ‘garb’ of safekeeping. She alleged that all the jewellery was misappropriated by the husband and his mother to discharge their pre-existing financial liabilities.

The family court, in 2011, held that the husband and his mother had misappropriated the wife’s gold jewellery and that she was entitled to recoup the loss caused to her by the said misappropriation.

The Kerala High Court had held that the woman had not been able to establish misappropriation of gold jewellery by the husband and his mother. The wife then moved the Supreme Court against the high court order.