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The Supreme Court highlights the persistent menace of dowry and suggests that no mercy be shown to the accused
“You have burnt to death a woman by pouring kerosene. How can you do such a barbaric act? It is an uncivilised act. You should be hanged for the crime,” said Justice Markandey Katju sitting with Justice Deepak Verma as a vacation Bench, on hearing an application filed by Prem Kumar Gulati who burnt his brother’s wife in collusion with his brother and mother, in Haryana. Gulati had been given a life sentence by the Punjab and Haryana High Court and was seeking relief in the Supreme Court. Justice Katju told the applicant’s counsel Jasbir Singh Malik, who said it was a case of suicide: “They all say that. Every time they burn a bride, they say it was a suicide. On the one hand they regard women as a devi, on the other hand they burn them alive. 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.” The Bench postponed the hearing to a later date. The deceased, Rajani, in her dying declaration, accused her husband Mahender Kumar Gulati, his elder brother and their mother of constantly harassing her and then setting her ablaze after pouring kerosene over her at their house in Bhiwani district. The accused was given a life sentence by the trials court; it was later confirmed by the high court. The appeal was directed against that judgment. It also sought bail. Although paying and accepting dowry has been illegal in India for 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. Other women have paid a very high price, sometimes even with their lives. The Dowry Prohibition Act 1961 (amended in 1984 and 1986) that bans paying and receiving dowry is rarely enforced by the police. Most of the time the perpetrators of the crime get away because of lack of evidence. In rare cases, the victims survive to make dying statements accusing the husband and in-laws of the atrocity. 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 women’s rights groups to increase the maximum punishment from life imprisonment to death. According to official data, one Indian woman, on average, commits suicide every four hours over a dowry dispute. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) lists a total of 2,276 female suicides due to dowry disputes in 2006, that’s an average of six a day. The British medical journal The Lancet recently confirmed that thousands of young women, mostly in the 15-34 age-group, are killed in “fires” in the country every year. The “fires” referred to in the article are mostly a result of blatant domestic abuse. “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 reports. It put the figure of such deaths at 100,000 a year. “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, despite the Pre-Natal Diagnostics Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) 1994 (amended 2002) Act that bans sex determination tests. Source: The Hindu, June 2, 2009
The Telegraph, June 2, 2009
http://straitstimes.com, March 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk, July 2003
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