Mohyal Online

The increasing demand for dowry has so much downgraded the prestige of an average woman that all the progress and development made by us appear to he meaningless, as on one hand we are making great strides and on the other, getting morally bankrupt.

The woman who is also a mother is passing through great crisis. Marriages are the base of our social and family set-up but bargaining mentality is spoiling the sanctity of this institution. Whatever the causes of the failure of its sanctity, is a separate issue.

What we are more concerned at present, is the alarming number of the dowry related deaths and excesses and torture being perpetrated on the married women. According to a report for the year 1995. a dowry death takes place in India after every one hour and forty two minutes, a woman becomes a victim of torture of her in-laws after every 31 minutes and modesty of a girl/woman is outraged after every seven minutes.

In 1991. dowry related deaths and victims of excesses of the so-called in-laws, had torched 5157 and 15949 respectively. There had been some decrease in the dowry related deaths in 1995. But torture and excesses at the hands of the in-laws is on increase day by day which has touched 28579 cases.

In 1995, 1850 married women had lost their lives in the Uttar Pradesh,47) in Maharastra, 417 in Madhya Pradesh, 362 in Andhra Pradesh 369 in Rajasthan, 218 in Haryana and 60 in Delhi, in the dowry related incidents. There might have been some exaggeration in these figures, but at the same time, some case might have gone unreported, two, reports of suicide by marriageable girls also appear in Press from time to time. In the second week of October, 1998, three unmarried sisters aged 18. 20 and 22, committed suicide in Baini Ganj (Uttar Pradesh) due to weak financial position of their family.