Maharashtra
Profile on Crime Against Women: DOWRY
Dowry can be treated as a stigma on
the Indian society. A girl leaves her
parental house around the age of 20 years and accepts the matrimonial house as
her home where she would spend the rest of life. Her well-being, sense of security, confidence and empowerment,
everything depends on the treatment that she gets during the initial period
immediately after the marriage. The
menace of dowry torture increased so much during the last twenty years that now
it has become a threat to the sense of well-being of the newly married
girl. After a large number of cases of
dowry torture and dowry deaths came to be reported, the Dowry Prohibition Act
which was passed by the government of India in _____ year was modified and made
further stringent. Now there is a
provision that if any girl dies within the first seven years of marriage, then
it shall be presumed that there was an element of dowry harassment and torture.
Even then the crime of dowry has
continued unabated. This has become
another reason for parents to feel worried about the worth of a girl
child. This in turn has led to many
instances of female infanticide, female foeticide and now rejecting female foetus by a pre-sex selection technology in
which a huge bunch of male sperms are vigourously churned to separate sperms
containing xx and xy chromosomes, and the female egg from the mother is
selectively fertilized by the sperm containing xx chromosomes only and inserted
in the mother’s womb, thus blanking out all possibilities of conceiving a girl
child. All this has resulted in a heavy
imbalance in the female male sex ratio which is a pre-cursor of a societal
violence. Such social and demographic considerations have
to be kept in mind while analysing the crime record of dowry deaths.
The crime of dowry death started
getting reported in the NCRB only from 1995 onwards.
As a part of my study of crimes
against women in Maharashtra, I analysed the five year data from 1995 to 1999
as available in these reports, and came up with some notable facts, which will
provide the basis for making any policy recommendations.
1. Chart 1 shows a districtwise and revenue
divisionwise details of dowry deaths registered by police between the period
1995 to 1999 alongwith the five-year average and the rate of dowry deaths per
one crore of population. It is seen
that every year around 400 dowry deaths have occurred in Maharashtra which
comes to 45 dowry deaths per crore population.
2. The first 10 districts showing very high
number of dowry deaths are Dhule, Latur, Mumbai, Kolhapur, Aurangabad, Nanded,
Parbhani, Pune, Satara and Buldhana.
·
In terms of rate of perpetration of this
crime, only Mumbai and Pune get excluded from the above list of top 10 and we
find that Osmanabad and Jalna show higher rate of crime than Mumbai and Pune.
·
In short, all the districts of Marathwada
namely Aurangabad, Jalna, Parbhani, Nanded, Latur and Osmanabad (except Beed)
show a high rate of dowry crime against
women.
·
·
This is in stark contrast with the fact that
the districts of Nagpur and Amravati divisions have very high rate of rapes
against women but a much lower rate of dowry deaths. On the other hand Marathwada division shows low rates of rapes
against women but very high rates of dowry deaths.
· Chart 2 gives five line-graphs for the
districts of Dhule, Latur, Mumbai, Kolhapur and Aurangabad over the period of
five years.
·
Mumbai and Kolhapur have shown an alarmingly
increasing trends over these five years.
·
Aurangabad shows a sudden drop in the crimes
which is unaccounted for. The drop from
66 in 1995 to 13 in 1999 is unbelievable to say the least. The only comment that is possible for such a
reporting is that absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence.
·
Chart 3 is an interesting list of districts
where the dowry death reporting is either too low (such as Ahmednagar and
Yavatmal) or where a sudden drop in the number is detectable, similar to the
situation in Aurangabad.
Fig. 4 is a comparison between the
share of the districts in the total crimes of dowry deaths and their share in
the total population of the State. It
is found that Latur, Dhule, Aurangabad, Kolhapur, Parbhani, Nanded, Buldhana
and Satara contribute much more to this crime than their share in the
population.
Chart 2 shows the rate of dowry death
per one crore population and the percentage share of various districts in this
rate. The extremely high rate of dowry
deaths in Latur goes beyond all possible justification. In 1992, several villages in Latur suffered
unprecedented world scale earthquake killing more than 50,000 people and
devastating huge junks of land. One
expected that such a calamity would change the mind-setup of people and take
them away from such grids and consumerism as are the root cause of dowry death
but the facts as indicated here are contrary to these expectation. Perhaps it is necessary to see the record of
dowry deaths in the earthquake hit villages and compare it with the record of
the other villages.
Among all the district, most surprising
results are shown by Dhule which has highest rate of dowry deaths. Dhule has a large tribal population. Hence there is a need to disaggregate this
data talukawise. It is also worthwhile
to analyse who are the victims of this crime.