Dowry-Death: When Marriage Becomes a
Death Sentence
An article by Lola Radix - May 12th,
2026
On August 21, 2025, Nikki Bathi, 28 years old, was burned
alive in Sirsa, Uttar Pradesh. Married for nine years, she had endured
relentless harassment over dowry demands from her husband and his family. Her
parents had always complied, until the very last demand, which they simply
could not meet (Chowdhury 2025).
Nikki’s killers did not act in a vacuum, they acted within a
system that always victimizes, and in the worst cases murders women.
Every day in India, approximately 20 women die because of
dowry (Chowdhury 2025). Between 2017 and 2022, 35,493 women were killed in
dowry-related conflicts, according to the National Crime Records Bureau
(Madanamoothoo 2025). And these figures are almost certainly underestimates
because murders of women are routinely disguised as accidents or suicides and
many cases are never reported at all because of social stigma (Kaur 2020).
To understand the phenomenon of dowry-death, we need to go
back to the origin of the dowry system.
The dowry: the dark side of a
tradition
The Indian dowry comes from two ancient hindu traditions: stridhan,
where the bride’s family and friends give her jewelries and gifts, and kanyadan,
where the bride’s father will give gifts to the husband’s family (Shivangi
2024). Kanyadan literally means “the giving away of a virgin daughter”,
also symbolic for the husband becoming the wife’s guardian (Laroche-Gisserot
2006).
But nowadays, dowry also reflects the market value of the
groom: the more educated and professionally successful the man, the higher the
sum demanded (Soni 2020).
Indeed, between 1930 and 1975, the prevalence of dowry
doubled and payments tripled (Chiplunkar and Weaver 2023). Far from fading with
modernisation, the practice has intensified alongside it.
Women are also perceived as financial burden, hence the
bride’s family’s need to compensate the husband for “putting up” with his
future wife (Musa, n.d.).
Gaurav Kashyap, director of the NGO HEEALS in Gurgaon, puts
it bluntly: dowry is still present in 99% of marriages, across all social
classes, from the poorest families to the wealthiest, despite being forbidden
by the law.
Violence as a consequence of dowry
When the dowry is deemed insufficient by the husband and his
family, which happens in roughly 26% of marriages (Kaur 2020), violence usually
follows. The most extreme form is bride burning: the wife is doused in
kerosene and set on fire (Kaur 2020). Other forms of dowry-deaths include
drowning, poisoning, or hanging… The majority of dowry deaths occur within the
first three years of marriage, when demands are most acute (Kaur 2020).
Yet violence does not begin with murder. A study from
eastern India found that 56% of women had experienced some form of domestic
violence (Kaur 2020). For many, this violence feels normal, women have been
socialised to accept their husband's authority as absolute, sometimes even
blaming themselves for provoking it (Musa, n.d.).
Divorce is rarely an easy exit: only 0.24% of India's
married population is divorced (Shivangi 2024).
A law that rarely protects women
What’s even worse is that dowry is in fact illegal since
1961 (Shivangi 2024). Following feminist pressures in the 1980s, amendments
introduced specific offences for dowry cruelty and dowry death (Shivangi 2024).
On paper, the legal architecture exists but in practice, it fails
systematically.
The conviction rate for dowry-related crimes stood at just
34.7% in 2019 (Kaur 2020).
The law's definition of "dowry death" is so narrow
that judges have dismissed cases on the grounds that a demand for money to cover
"domestic expenses" does not legally constitute a dowry demand (Musa, n.d.). The burden of proof falls on
the victim's family, who must demonstrate that gifts were coerced, without
written records, without witnesses, often without a surviving daughter (Musa, n.d.). .
A legal loophole further undermines enforcement: gifts are
made out to the bride rather than the groom's family (Musa, n.d.).
India's silent feminicide
Dowry-death is one of the most extreme expression of a
hatred toward women, so deeply embedded that it has been institutionalised, in
marriage and in law. When a woman is doused in kerosene and set on fire because
her family did not come up with enough dowry, it is the reminder that the
system has always treated women as transactions and as disposable.
Bibliography
Chiplunkar, Gaurav, and Jeffrey
Weaver. 2023. “Marriage Markets and the Rise of Dowry in India.” Journal of
Development Economics 164 (September): 103115.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdeveco.2023.103115.
Chowdhury, Kavita. 2025.
“Dowry-Related Violence Continues to Claim the Lives of India’s Daughters.”
Thediplomat.com. The Diplomat. August 29, 2025.
https://thediplomat.com/2025/08/dowry-related-violence-continues-to-claim-the-lives-of-indias-daughters/.
Kaur, Navpreet. 2020. “Bride
Burning: A Unique and Ongoing Form of Gender-Based Violence.” Journal of
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jflm.2020.102035.
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in INDIA: THE LAW & ITS ROLE in the CONTINUANCE of the WIFE BURNING
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Shivangi, Ranjan. 2024. “The Evil:
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https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1354&context=swb.
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