LUCKNOW, May 27 -- The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad high court has held that the maximum penalty of life imprisonment for the offence of dowry death under Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) must not be imposed as a "matter of course". Instead, this "extreme" punishment must be awarded only in the "rarest of rare" cases.

A division bench of Justice Rajesh Singh Chauhan and Justice Indrajeet Shukla passed the judgement on May 22 while partly allowing the appeal filed by three convicted persons. The court made the observation while upholding the conviction of a husband and his parents in a 2012 dowry death case pertaining to Mall police station in Lucknow.

The bench, however, applied the principle of proportional sentencing and ...