As an enlightened and aware Indian citizen you probably read the newspapers, magazines or listen to daily news, all of which tell tales of the magnanimous scale of violence that Indian women in our so called modern society go through every day. India’s classical past and its rich cultural heritage accorded women a designation of honour and a treatment equal as men. But gone are those days of classicism and culture; today as you read about the increasing rate of atrocities and violence inflicted on women, you are perhaps compelled to wonder if we have actually changed for the worst with all the education and modernization the Indians have acquired for themselves. Has modernization given birth to greed given which has awakened the hidden devil within us?
Being a woman in India is damn challenging; for some women every single day is a battle as they live through lewd remarks, harassment and sexually inappropriate behaviour at the hands of strangers. But what when the torturers are people you call your own, your very family? One of the most common crimes against women that have existed in our country for many decades is Dowry-related crimes. Dowry crimes are so very rampant in India and they have such a long history that today these crimes are known worldwide as the typical ‘Indian’ crimes.
Types of Dowry Crimes & Vital Statistics:
Dowry-related crimes can be of many types: wife-bashing and various other sorts of domestic violence inflicted by husband and in-laws on a bride, marital rape, acid throwing, creating emotional trauma on the bride through ceaseless threats, and last but not the least, robbing the bride of her life if their dowry demands are not met.
When a woman is married off, she spins a web of dreams regarding her new life with her husband in a new family amid her in-laws. But when they treat her inhumanly by battering her, abusing her verbally, torturing her for money and so on, she is made to go through the most harrowing experience of her life. Not only is her world of dreams shattered to a thousand pieces, she might also become prone to depression as our society frowns upon those who lift a finger to accuse their own family and drag them to courts.
The culture of avarice is flourishing in our country, and also increasing is the goriness of the dowry-related crimes. You’ll recoil in terror if you go thorugh the statistics of deaths upon dowry in India. In the year 2012, 8233 newly-wed brides were murdered on the basis of dowry-related issues, as recorded by the country’s National Crime Records Bureau.
One very noteworthy dowry death that generated ripples all across the nation was that of Pravartika Gupta who was murdered last year. She was charred to death in the bedroom where she was sleeping with her daughter who was just a year old. Her in-laws had threatened her because her parents could not hasten their dowry payment schedules. There was an agreement that her parents will pay an amount of £15,000 in hard cash and will also purchase a Honda City four wheeler for the in-laws. But suddenly they started demanding that her parents should also buy a lavish apartment which was nearly impossible for Pravartika’s parents to afford. As a result, Pravartika was sentenced to an untimely and gruesome death.
Laws against Dowries Meaningless: Why so?
There are laws in place against Dowry in our country, but in spite of that, Dowry crimes continue to play their menacing role. This is because the laws come with many loopholes. In fact the 1961 Dowry Prohibition Act has been proved more or less ineffective due to some fundamental flaws.
For instance Section-3 of this Act declares dowry system a punishable offence for both dowry taker and dowry giver. Now the dowry giver is always under pressure, he cannot easily lodge a complaint because he doesn’t want to ruin the chances of a prospective wedding for the daughter in the family, and is also scared of encountering legal sanctions. So this clause is a defective one.
Section 7 of this act declares demand for dowry as a non-cognizable offence, which implies that lodging a complaint for it is mandatory. And for many people, being scared of getting involved in unnecessary legal hassles, wasting time, money and resources are the main reasons for not seeking help. Furthermore, this act declares dowry offence as a bail-able one, which implies that the convict or guilty can be released on anticipatory bail no matter how grave a crime (e.g. bride burning) they have committed.
Changes are Needed
As is obvious, death and dowry go hand in hand because laws in our country are lacking in so many aspects. Two necessary steps that have to undertaken to combat the evils of dowry are:
- 1. Dowry laws need to be sterner
- 2. The judicial procedure pertaining to dowry crimes needs to speed up
Only once these changes are incorporated, will dowry become obsolete in our country, as the in-laws and husband of bride will think twice before committing these inhuman crimes.
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