A 28-year-old woman, who was allegedly murdered for dowry by her husband and five of his family six years ago, was found alive in Vaishali's Jandaha, around 40km north of Patna, on Tuesday evening.

On Wednesday, the police produced Mala Devi in the court of Hajipur additional chief judicial magistrate Vijay Krishna, which recorded her statement under Section 164 of the CrPC. The police took her into custody when she was waiting for an acquaintance at Suresh Chowk in Vaishali on Tuesday.

Mala told the court she had escaped from her in-laws' house at Chaksahauli village in Vaishali on her own in May 2011. However, her father Shankar Rai, a resident of Bardiha Khurd village at Patepur in Vaishali, lodged an FIR with the Jandaha police station, accusing her husband Sakindra Rai and five others of killing her for dowry and tampering with evidence.

The station house officer (SHO) of Jandaha police station Rajiv Ranjan Srivastava told The Telegraph on Wednesday that a police team headed by sub-inspector Uday Chandra Jha spotted Mala when she was waiting for somebody near Suresh Chowk on Tuesday evening. "She was detained at the police station for interrogation," he added.

During interrogation, Mala said she got married to another man, a resident of Agrail village in Patepur after she came to know that Sakindra was already married. "I was shaken by the revelation and decided to desert him (Sakindra)," she told the police.

Two years into her first marriage, Mala got an opportune moment and escaped from her in-laws' house. She didn't visit her parents. Instead, she went to her paramour's house in Agrail, around 3km away from her parental home and married him, she reportedly told the interrogators.

The SHO said the police had chargesheeted the six accused in the case on the basis of evidence in December 2011. The property of the accused was also attached as they were evading arrest for long. "The case is pending in the court," he added.

He, however, clarified that nobody could be arrested in the case as they were absconding. The SHO said in the FIR, the complainant (read Mala's father) stated that Mala was married to Sakindra Rai of Chaksahauli village on May 28, 2009. The marriage was solemnised at Thaneshwar temple in Samastipur according to Hindu rituals. The couple's marriage took a twist when Mala came to know about her husband's second marriage, the SHO added.

On the contrary, Mala's father alleged in the FIR that Sakindra started harassing his daughter (Mala) on the pretext of Rs 5 lakh dowry. Sakindra had sought dowry for setting up business at Ludhiana, Punjab. When she refused to fulfil his demand, Sakindra and her family members killed her and destroyed evidence.

The SHO said: "The new facts will be brought to the notice of the court after the safe recovery of the woman, who was earlier declared 'dead'. The investigating officer of the case has been told to initiate the process."

The Supreme Court, in 2014, had observed that the dowry law was being "used as weapon by disgruntled wives".

"The simplest way to harass is to get the husband and his relatives arrested," the two-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Chandramuali Kumar Prasad, in a 21-page order, had said.

This is not the first time when fingers have been pointed at police investigation. Earlier, the Muzaffarpur police received flak for arresting a husband, Manoj Kumar, on the charge of killing his wife Pinki for dowry and tampering evidence.

Pinki was later recovered from Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh. Later the court sent Pinki to judicial custody for misleading the police by providing wrong information.