Glamorous entrepreneur found hanged after dowry dispute

DELHI • One of India’s most successful and glamorous entrepreneurs was found hanged days after she registered a police complaint against her in-laws for “dowry harassment.”

Akanksha Rathi, 32, was found dead having told police that her in-laws had never been able to overcome her low caste status and were trying to stop her claiming her husband’s inheritance.

She was known in India’s maledominated steel industry not only for her designer style but for her sharp business acumen. She had won the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award in 2009 and had transformed an outpost of her husband’s family business into a $69-million-a-year company in just a few years.

However, her husband’s parents had allegedly opposed her “love marriage” to their 34-year-old son Anirudh Rathi, who died from a heart attack in September.

She claimed that the family waged a campaign of harassment against her in the weeks after his death to stop her inheriting her husband’s share of the family steel empire.

Detectives in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, where the steel firm was based, said that they had received anonymous calls shortly after her body was discovered in New Delhi last week to say the death was not a suicide.