Executive summary
In Khalida Naseem v Bashir Ahmed etc. and four connected family appeals decided on 5 May 2026, the appellate court, The Court Of Muhammad Amir Munir Additional District Judge, Depalpur, treated a dowry dispute not simply as an inventory contest but as a question of a married woman’s property, the husband’s benefit from that property during cohabitation, and the economic consequences of retaining it after her ouster. The judgment held that once the wife had proved the dowry remained with the husband’s side, lapse of time went to valuation rather than entitlement. The court therefore reassessed the non-jewellery dowry through “depreciation” and “fair usage compensation”, fixed an alternative value of Rs390,000, imposed Rs10,000 per month as rent for continued retention from August 2023 until return or payment, awarded a limited share of jewellery as dowry, and separately affirmed 7 tolas of gold as deferred dower under the nikah nama. The court’s reasoning was expressly linked to constitutional protection of property, equality, and the protection of women, children, and the family.
Introduction
Questions concerning dowry recovery are often argued as proof disputes: what was given, where it went, and whether enough evidence survives to identify it years later. The judgment under review reframed that inquiry. In the appellate court’s view, once dowry articles were shown to have remained in the matrimonial home, the law also had to confront the husband’s use of those articles during the marriage and his continuing benefit from retaining them after the wife’s removal from the house. They convert a conventional dowry claim into a broader analysis of property, possession, value, and unjust enrichment.
Facts and issues
The judgment arose from consolidated family litigation between the wife and mother, Khalida Naseem, and the husband’s side, concerning maintenance, dowry articles, jewellery, and deferred dower. For present purposes, the material facts are brief. The judgment records that the marriage took place in December 2007, though one passage refers to 17 December 2007 and another to 18 December 2007. The spouses then lived together for around fifteen and a half years until, according to the wife’s case accepted by the appellate court, she was turned out of the matrimonial home in August 2023 along with three children. She sought recovery of dowry articles said to be worth Rs15,12,500, along with jewellery and deferred dower of 7 tolas of gold. The husband’s side denied liability, alleged that the wife had taken away the dowry herself, and also advanced counter-allegations concerning possession of a house and return of gold. The trial court had partially decreed the claims by awarding Rs125,000 as a consolidated amount for dowry articles, rejecting the wife’s gold-ornament claim as dowry, and affirming her entitlement to deferred dower equivalent to 7 tolas of gold or its market value at the time of realisation. Both sides appealed.
The property-related outcomes may be stated shortly as follows. The figures below are drawn from the trial-court recital:
| Issue | Trial court | Appellate position |
| Non-jewellery dowry | Rs125,000 consolidated amount | Rs390,000 as alternative value |
| Retention of dowry after August 2023 | No continuing monetary charge | Rs10,000 per month as rent until return or payment |
| Dowry jewellery | Gold-ornament claim rejected | 5 tolas silver and 0.5 tola gold, or market value at execution |
| Deferred dower | 7 tolas gold or market value at realisation | Affirmed |
Dowry as property and unjust enrichment
The first step in the appellate reasoning was evidentiary. The court read the written statement as internally contradictory: the respondents formally denied the dowry claim, yet their own pleadings also proceeded on the footing that dowry articles existed and had allegedly been shifted by the wife. The court described this as a “halfhearted” admission. It then found that the wife’s witnesses had materially proved the dowry claim, whereas the husband relied mainly on his own affidavit, produced no effective corroboration, and failed to establish his counter-version. The non-appearance of the father-in-law, despite being a defendant, further weakened the defence. On that footing, the dowry claim succeeded in principle.
The Judgment then shifted its focus from possession to valuation. The court expressly stated that family-law adjudication had to use contextual tools drawn from economics and accounting so that one party was not “unjust[ly] enrich[ed]” at the expense of the other. It also linked that approach to women’s rights over property under Part II of the Constitution, and cited Fazal Jan v Roshan Din (PLD 1990 SC 661) as authority for that broader understanding. Read alongside the constitutional text, that move is significant. Article 23 secures every citizen’s right to acquire, hold and dispose of property; Article 24 protects against deprivation of property except in accordance with law; Article 25 guarantees equality and allows special provision for women and children; and Article 35 directs protection of marriage, the family, the mother and the child. The appellate court treated those principles as part of the legal setting in which a wife’s dowry claim had to be valued and enforced.
The judgment did not accept the mere passage of time as a full defence. Instead, it reasoned that because family suits do not lend themselves to strict item-by-item proof and pricing after many years, courts may reach only a tentative assessment. Proceeding on that basis, the court isolated the non-jewellery portion of the dowry at Rs10,52,500 and accepted that these articles had depreciated through use, age, and wear and tear. The husband, the court said, had himself been an equal user of the dowry articles during the marriage and had therefore contributed to their depreciation. That is where the judgment introduced its key concept of “fair usage compensation”. On the court’s own arithmetic, the post-depreciation figure was taken as Rs1,95,000 and then doubled to Rs3,90,000 so that the husband would not retain the benefit of long use without monetary consequence. In the court’s reasoning, this was the appropriate alternative value of the non-jewellery dowry.
Since the wife had been ousted in August 2023, the continued keeping of the dowry by the respondents was treated as illegal possession after that date. The court therefore imposed a tentative rent of Rs10,000 per month for retaining those articles, payable until the articles were returned or their alternative value was paid. The importance of this holding lies in its structure: the court separated the wife’s entitlement into two heads, one addressing the value of the articles themselves and the other addressing the husband’s continuing benefit from withholding them after cohabitation had ended.
Jewellery and deferred dower
The jewellery issue was approached differently. The appellate court accepted that jewellery ordinarily accompanies a bride in this society and that the husband had failed to prove that gold and silver jewellery were not part of the dowry. Even so, the court also reasoned that in a strained marriage one could not safely assume that all jewellery remained in the husband’s house throughout. Some of it might well have stayed with the wife for personal use. The court therefore rejected both extremes: neither a complete denial of jewellery nor the entire claimed amount. Instead, it awarded one quarter of the claimed jewellery, fixed as 5 tolas of silver and half a tola of gold, to be returned in specie or paid at market value on the date of execution in Depalpur. The trial court’s blanket rejection of the gold-ornament claim as dowry was accordingly overruled to that extent.
The 7 tolas of gold mentioned in the nikah nama were kept analytically distinct from dowry jewellery. the court read column 13 and column 16 of the marriage contract together. Column 13 recorded the haq mehr paid in cash at the time of marriage, while column 16 stated that 7 tolas of gold “will” become the ownership of the bride. The appellate court held that this language signified deferred dower, payable upon termination of the marriage. The trial court’s decree in that regard was therefore maintained. The husband’s plea that he had already delivered this gold was rejected as unproved and frivolous. The result is important: the judgment treats dowry and deferred dower as legally separate claims, even where both involve jewellery or gold.
Ratio and concluding note
Where the wife proves that dowry articles remained with the husband’s side and the defence fails to rebut possession, the family court may treat the claim as one concerning the wife’s property rather than a mere dispute over stale household goods. In that setting, delay and long use affect valuation, not title. The husband’s own use of the articles during cohabitation may justify an upward adjustment so that he is not unjustly enriched by their depreciation, and continued retention after the wife’s ouster may attract a separate recurring rent until return or payment. Jewellery forming part of dowry may be assessed separately on the facts, while deferred dower remains enforceable according to the nikah nama as an independent contractual obligation.
Read as a whole, this is a judgment about economic rights in family litigation. It holds that a wife’s dowry cannot be reduced to a vanished list of ageing household items where the husband has had the benefit of their use and still retains them after her removal from the matrimonial home. The judgment’s lasting point is that economic loss in a family suit may be measured not only by residual value, but also by use, retention, and the independent enforceability of deferred dower.
