Indian dowry deaths on the rise

The number of Indian brides burned to death for not bringing adequate dowry payments is on the rise.

Dowry was banned by law in 1961 but never seriously enforced Credit: Photo: ALAMY

In 2010, 8391 dowry death cases were reported across India, meaning a bride was burned every 90 minutes, according to statistics recently released by the National Crime Records Bureau.

A decade earlier this number was 6995, but climbed to 8093 dowry deaths in 2007.

Dowry, although banned by law in 1961 but never seriously enforced, is an ancient tradition prevalent amongst most Indian families.

With prosperity burgeoning after the early 1990s when India's state-controlled economy opened up to a free market system, this pernicious custom became more acute with greedy grooms backed by their families seeking to get rich through their hapless brides.

But if a bride refused to satisfy incessant demands by her husband and in-laws for money and goods, despite having brought with her the mandatory dowry at the time of marriage, she was subjected to inhuman treatment.

Thereafter, the luckless girl was either starved, administered frequent beatings or simply "jailed" inside her bridal home and denied all contact with her family.

If her family either declined to pay or were simply unable to do so, many in-laws in connivance with their sons forced the bride into an flammable nylon sari, doused her with paraffin and set her alight, claiming she had caught fire whilst cooking.

In the early 1980s such dowry deaths became so commonplace – climbing up to even five a day in the federal capital New Delhi-that anti-dowry activists forced the government in 1986 to change prevailing laws stacked against the bride.

Consequently, all such deaths by burning within seven years of marriage were deemed 'unnatural' and cases of murder were immediately registered against the husband and his parents.

The brides' dying statements were also treated as inviolate evidence, a move that led to a reduction in the number of such cases soon after the law was first passed.

But hundreds of bride burning cases go unreported.

It also takes decades for the simplest of cases in India's overloaded courts to be decided, after which the litigants invariably file appeal petitions leading to further interminable delays and denial of timely justice.

Three years ago India's Supreme Court declared that no mercy should be shown to those found guilty of burning brides for not bringing adequate dowry.

"On one hand people regard women as devi (goddess), on the other hand they burn them alive. This is against the norms of civilised society. It's barbaric," former Justice Markandey Katju remarked in response to an appeal filed by a husband handed a life sentence by a Sessions court for burning his wife.