India's apex court takes tough stand against dowry
Commenting on a recent case of dowry death in a north Indian state, the country’s apex court has said that no mercy should be shown towards the perpetrators of crime. Every year thousands of women fall prey to greedy husbands and in-laws.
New Delhi: A vacation of the Supreme Court of India recently observed burning young brides over dowry was barbaric and against the norms of a civilised society.
- Dowry deaths in India/ Photo credit: Google
The apex court was hearing the review petition of Prem Kumar Gulati. The victim, Rajani, in her dying declaration, had accused her husband Mahender, his elder brother [Prem] and their mother of constantly harassing her and then setting her ablaze at their house in Bhiwani district.
Prem Kumar Gulati had been given a life sentence by the Punjab and Haryana High Court and was seeking relief in the Supreme Court.
Rejecting the application, Justice Markandey Katju said: “Every time they burn a bride, they say it was a suicide. This is against the norms of civilised society. It’s barbaric. We will not grant you any relief. You can try your luck before another Bench.”
Although paying and accepting dowry has been illegal in India for last 40 years, it is still rampant. The contentious – but thriving – system was put under the spotlight when Nisha Sharma, a young bride from Noida, had her groom arrested for demanding cash from her family in 2003. But other women have had to pay a very high price. Sometimes even with their lives.
The police rarely enforce the Dowry Prohibition Act 1961. Most of the time perpetrators get away because of lack of evidence.
Under the provisions of the Dowry Prohibition Act, the accused may be sentenced to a minimum of seven years or a maximum of life.
The Law Commission has recommended increasing the minimum sentence from seven to 10 years in dowry death cases. It has, however, declined a suggestion by the National Commission for Women and rights groups to increase the maximum punishment from life imprisonment to death.
On an average, a woman commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) listed a total of 2,276 female suicides due to dowry disputes in 2006.
A British medical journal The Lancet recently revealed that every year thousands of young women, mostly in the age group of 15-34, were getting killed in ‘fires’ in India. It put the figure of such deaths at 100,000 a year.
“Domestic abuse is a serious problem in India. Women are sometimes killed in disputes over dowries. Often in such disputes, the victims are doused with gasoline and set ablaze, and their deaths are claimed as kitchen accidents,” the journal noted.
“Most times women are tortured to squeeze more money out of their families, and in extreme cases they’re killed. Then the husband is free to remarry and get another dowry,” says Ranjana Kumari who runs seven domestic violence refuge centres for women in Delhi.
Dowries have become such a burden that many families are desperate to avoid having girls. Pregnant women are made to undergo ultrasound tests to determine the sex of the baby, and, very often, female foetuses are aborted. This is despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act 1994 that bans sex determination tests.
