According to the National Crime Records Bureau
(NCRB), 8,233 women died in disputes over dowry payments given by the bride's
family to the groom’s family at the time of marriage in 2012 – that works out
to be one death per hour.
The report comes as the world’s attention
remains on women’s rights issues in India after a number of high-profile rape
cases shocked the nation and the globe.
Thousands of Indian women die every year
because the groom’s family deemed the dowry amount to be inadequate. Many of
the women are doused with gasoline and burned to death. According to AFP, dowry
demands continue even years after the marriage ceremony.
The number of deaths has been steadily
growing, rising from 8,093 in 2007 to 8,618 in 2011.
The NCRB is responsible for the collection
and processing of crime statistics at the national level.
Indian law does not allow the paying and
receiving of a dowry, but century-old traditions remain in place despite legal
boundaries.
Marriages
have become commercialized and dowry demands became more extravagant after
India’s economic boom, AP quoted women’s rights activist Ranjana Kumari as
saying. "Marriages [are]
like a business proposition where the groom and his family make exorbitant demands.
And the wealthier the family, the more outrageous the demands," Kumari said.
The dowry-related crimes are not limited to
just lower and middle classes, according to Suman Nalwa, deputy commissioner of
the Delhi Police Department’s Special Unit for Women and Children.
"Higher
socio-economic strata is equally involved in such practices. Even the highly
educated class of our society do not say no to dowry. It runs deep into our
social system," Nalwa told The Times of India. "The
existing law has certain loopholes and needs to be made stricter. Despite the
amendments made to the Dowry Act in 1983, good results are still desired to be
achieved.”
Moreover, the conviction rate in
dowry-related crimes remains at only 32 percent, according to statistics published
by the bureau last week.
The current law has many loopholes and such
crimes go largely unrecorded, senior Supreme Court lawyer Kamini Jaiswal
stated. "We need quick conviction in such
cases. Our judicial procedure has become very slow, police does not record a
case at initial stage," Jaiswal
said.
In one of the most recent cases, a
25-year-old pregnant woman was reportedly set on fire by her in-laws over a
dowry in south-eastern India, The Hindu quoted police officials as saying.
Students also held a peaceful demonstration
in southern India to demand the arrest of a man who allegedly killed his wife
and daughter on July 10 over a dowry dispute.
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