Cash, cars and gold: Dowry bazaar flourishes in Capital
“It was a mistake to educate my daughter and send her to IIT. I should have saved all the money for her dowry,” said Manoj Devak, waiting outside a mortuary on a hot summer evening in late May as doctors carried out an autopsy on his daughter, Manjula.
Less than 24 hours ago, Manjula, a civil engineer and a PhD scholar at the coveted IIT Delhi, hanged herself from the ceiling fan of her hostel room.
Manjula was among 58 women in Delhi who died between January and June after allegedly being bullied for more dowry, a toxic custom of brides’ families being forced to give gifts such as cash, cars and property to the groom. India outlawed the dowry tradition in 1961 but it continues to be as much a social reality as it was five decades ago.
According to Delhi Police statistics, dowry harassment allegations, filed under Indian penal code’s Section 498A almost doubled in five years, going from 2,046 new cases in 2012 to 3,877 last year. This is in contrast to the trend in other crimes such as murder, robbery, rape or dacoity, which decreased every year since 2012 or only had a marginal increase. The number of unreported cases of dowry harassment could be sizeable too. HT pored over all the 1,330 first investigation reports (FIRs) filed for such cases in the first six months of 2017, and found that the tradition cuts across demographics.
Women as educated as Manjula are as likely to be harassed for dowry as a woman from an impoverished background married to a rickshaw puller. The spectrum of dowry allegedly sought — from a gas cylinder worth around ₹1,500 to an Audi Q5 SUV and ₹2.5cr cash – suggests a woman’s economic status too did not make her any less likely to come under pressure.
A large number of complainants said the harassment over inadequate dowry began as early as during the honeymoon. One woman said she was assaulted in a taxi in Thailand. In 50 cases, women claimed they were forced into unnatural sex and five complainants said they accepted torture because their husbands allegedly shot sex videos.
Common items demanded, according to the complaints, included gold jewellery (543 cases), refrigerators (566 cases), sofa sets (217 cases), LED television sets, flats and land assets.
The cases studied are in the trial phase, and recent observations from India’s top courts, experts and activists suggest that all may not be genuine since the law’s misuse is common. Last month, the SC restricted automatic arrests under the antidowry law and in 2014, a separate SC bench called Section 498A a “a weapon, not a shield used by disgruntled wives”. But, activists say, just as many cases may not be true, thousands of genuine cases are probably not being reported. SC advocate Rebecca John agrees there are false cases but says she is worried about the law being looked at from the prism of false cases. “You look at law from the objective it serves. Don’t look at women as revengeful human beings.” But beside the debate, officials believe a part of the blame is with growing “materialism”. “Dowry is an ancient ritual where fathers helped their daughters even when they were not rich. Even a middle class or a lower middle class family gave dowry. Gradually, affluence grew and with it, so did the scale of dowry,” said former Delhi Police commissioner Ajay Raj Sharma.