The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961

§7 — Cognizance of offences

(1) Notwithstanding anything contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974),— (a) no Court inferior to that of a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate of the first class shall try any offence under this Act; (b) nocourt shall take cognizance of an offence under this Act except upon— (i) its own knowledge or a police report of the facts which constitute such offence, or (ii) a complaint by the person aggrieved by the offence or a parent or other relative of such person, or by any recognised welfare institution or organisation; (c) it shall be lawful for a Metropolitan Magistrate or a Judicial Magistrate of the first class to pass any sentence authorised by this Act on any person convicted of an offence under this Act. Explanation.—For the purposes of this sub-section, “recognised welfare institution or organisation” means a social welfare institution or organisationrecognised in this behalf by the Central or State Government. (2) Nothing in Chapter XXXVI of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974), shall apply to any offence punishable under this Act.] [(3) Notwithstanding anything contained in any law for the time being in force a statement made by the person aggrieved by the offence shall not subject such person to a prosecution under this Act.]

State amendments

This section has been amended in its application to Haryana. The text above is the central provision and is what applies everywhere else — these amendments are law only in the State that made them.

Haryana[Vide Haryana Act 38 of 1976, s. 4]Read →Hide
Substitution of section 7 of Parliament Act 28 of 1961.-- For section 7 of the principal Act, the following section shall be substituted, namely :- "7. Cognizance of offences. - Notwithstanding contained in the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973 (2 of 1974), (a) no court inferior to that of a Judicial Magistrate of the first class shall try any offence under this Act; (b) no court shall take cognizance of any such offence except on a complaint made by any party to the marriage or her father, mother or brother or a Gazetted Officer specially authorized by the State Government in this behalf, within a period of one year from the date of the marriage ; (c) no court shall take cognizance of any such offence except with the previous sanction of the District Magistrate or of such officer as the State Government may, by general or special order, specify in this behalf ; (d) no enquiry shall be got made through any Police Officer below the rank of a Deputy Superintendent of Police; (e) no woman shall be called to a Police Station for the purpose of an enquiry regarding any offence under this Act,".

Reproduced from the same official PDF as the section above, as the amending Act words it — not a consolidated State version of the section. Check the source before relying on it.

Share:WhatsApp Telegram

Source & version

Official text: India Code (official) ↗

Official India Code text: The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, English PDF (bitstream 123456789/1679/4/a1961-28.pdf, 185,946 bytes, sha256 08f57bb1675a5a85...) fetched directly from indiacode.nic.in (Akamai edge, DNS via dns.google) on 2026-08-03. Extracted via pdftotext 26.07 -bbox and the @nexlex/ingest inline parser. Automated parse; footnotes and amendment history excluded. Spot-verified against the PDF; full clause-level proofread pending.

How we verify this text →

Spotted a mistake in this text or its mapping? Report an issue with DOWRY §7

Was this page useful for your prep?