Problem of Dowry in Indian Society

Amar Sharma and Akhil Sehrawat

Pravartika Gupta, burnt to death in her bedroom, as she slept with her one year old daughter. She had been threatened by her in-laws because her family could not afford to meet their dowry demands.^[1]

http://www.indiatimes.com/news/india/exiitian-wins-dowry-casethere-is-still-some-hope-left-for-the-men-231697.html

Indian Society has been suffering from problem of Dowry (Dahej Pratha) for a long time. The government’s response to the rising incidence of dowry related violence in the form of the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961 failed to give a coherent answer to this surging problem.
 
It was soon realized that the provisions of these Act were porous and lacked effective measures to deal with these social evils as it is really simple to misuse these laws to simply blackmail and harass husband and his family. There are various cases in which wives have used this law as a weapon for accusing innocents and ruined their lives.

There has been not much studies done on misuse of these Laws. Our study consists of literature search, a short survey and personal interviews. We looked at the laws which are in force in India relating to dowry (The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, The India Penal Code, 1860- Sections 498A and 304B and The Indian Evidence Act- Section 113B) and National Crime Records Bureau data for Law Commissions reports.
 
We conducted a short survey on the problem of dowry with students of IIT Patna. We conducted the survey through Google forms and analyzed the responses using Google spreadsheets. We also conducted some interviews to know different opinions of fellow students and their parents.
 
The results for the survey conducted by us are analyzed in the graphs below:

Survey Results Summary 

 Default 1: Strongly Agree 5: Strongly Disagree

For the below graph 1: Strongly 5: Not at all

For the below graph 1: No punishment 5: Harsh punishment

Results from National Crime Records Bureau data:

High Pendency of cases in court

There is a huge pendency of cases in the courts. The disposal of the cases that are sent for trial is extremely slow, which is the biggest problem India is facing in terms of implementation of laws.

Gross misuse of Anti-Dowry Laws

The law is being used as a tool to harass husbands and his relatives. In fact there has been an increase in the number of false cases being filed, as can be seen in figure.
 
To tackle this situation, the Supreme Court recently directed that the police should not immediately arrest the accused when a case under Section 498A of the IPC is registered. Before arresting, the police have to be satisfied that the arrest is absolutely necessary. They must follow the 9-point checklist provided under section 41 of CrPC to weigh the need to arrest.
 
Conclusion:
 
Though only 2.2% of surveyed people agree that they will ask for dowry but only 76.1% disagree on accepting dowry at their wedding. And only 60.9% think their family will not ask for dowry. Only 8.7% disagree that amendments to anti-dowry laws are required to decrease its misuse. Thus misuse of anti-dowry laws is also a big concern for these people.

Exchange of ‘gifts’ is exempted from the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961. But this provision is being misused, whereby, dowry is being exchanged in the name of gift. NCRB data shows that there has been decrease in the number of dowry death cases reported. In 2012 there were 8618 cases of dowry death reported where in 2013 the number fell to only 8233. In most of the cases the main accused were the mother in-law and sister in-laws. Women are the main torturers in most of the cases.

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[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/india/10280802/Woman-killed-over-dowry-everyhour-in-India.html