Dowry crimes increase as India's economy grows

By Tim Sullivan
The Associated Press

E-mail this article Print this article Search archive Most read articles Most e-mailed articles

NEW DELHI, India — The ladies of the Tihar Jail dowry wing can tell you about the tragedies that befall daughters-in-law: kitchen fires and suicides, plunges from apartment balconies and mysterious ailments.

What they tend not to mention is that they are accused — and sometimes convicted — of involvement in those tragedies, violent disputes over the size of the dowry the bride brought into the marriage.

"Televisions and fridges, sometimes even cars, this is what people ask for now," said Jyoti Chaudhary, an assistant superintendent who oversees the jail's dowry wing, a cocoon of seemingly gentle women in a prison holding some of India's most violent criminals.

Around here, they simply call it "the mother-in-law wing."

It can be dangerous to be a daughter-in-law in India, where marriage and money are tied together in ancient traditions.

According to official figures, about 7,000 Indian women were killed in dowry disputes last year, a number that rights groups say is perhaps half the actual total. The decade that ended in 2000, a time when India's economy leaped forward, saw a 38 percent rise in killings, and a tripling in harassment complaints.

It means little that dowries have been illegal since 1961. The vast majority of Indian families, from the urban elite to illiterate farmers, still pay some form of dowry to seal their daughters' wedding agreements.

Created long ago to ensure that brides had wealth of their own, the tradition, essentially, has become a fee paid by the bride's family to the groom's. Sons commonly remain at home with their parents, and their wives are expected to move in too, taking over many household chores.

When trouble arises, it can be horrific. Authorities talk of brides held down by sisters-in-law as husbands douse them in kerosene and set them afire, locked in closets until they starve or beaten in front of their husbands' families.
 
Wealth has only compounded the problem.

The sharp spike in the number of dowry-related crimes closely parallels a galloping Indian economy that has brought the trophies of middle-class life — TVs and motorcycles and matching dining-room sets — tantalizingly close for hundreds of millions of people.

Want to marry your daughter to a banker? The Times of India pegged his cost at about $15,000, paid to his parents in cash and gifts. A businessman with a MBA is at least $32,000. And a member of the Indian Administrative Service, the country's elite bureaucrats: at least $44,000.

Lower down the economic ladder, among the middle-class aspirants who fill Tihar, the numbers also have changed.

Where grooms' families once asked for bicycles, today they'll demand motorcycles or cars. Those who would have asked for furniture now submit long requests for electronic goods.

For some families, the demands for cash and gifts often continue long after the weddings.

Often, the killings are disguised as suicides or kitchen injuries from burst kerosene stoves, authorities say. Sometimes, the crimes are actual suicides where authorities say husbands or in-laws drove the women to kill themselves.

The grim statistics, in part, reflect increased awareness and more reporting of dowry crimes. More police units today are dedicated to protecting women, and prosecutions of dowry-demanding families occur fairly regularly. By law, women who die within seven years of marriage must be autopsied.

"I didn't commit any crime ... no one in my family did," said Shanti Devi, a soft-spoken 59-year-old housewife whose daughter-in-law — depending on whom you believe — either committed suicide or was pushed from a fifth-floor apartment. Who is said to have pushed her isn't clear.

"I never asked for dowry," insisted Devi, who said her daughter-in-law was mentally ill. "But if her family wanted to give us something as a gift, we would happily accept it."