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Dowry Law (2003)
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[] [Adam] A young couple setting off on the Indian dream, a successful, prosperous life together. [people cheering] [Adam] It's the wedding season in India, thousands of young people are getting married. This lavish marriage in a five-star hotel has cost thousands of pounds. Weddings in today's India are increasingly about conspicuous consumption, spend it, flaunt it. Across town, a Muslim ceremony with the dowry out on show. Gifts and cash from the bride's father. Muslims never used to give dowries. [man 1] We have organized a motorbike, it's a latest brand of the LML Freedom that is. We bought a cupboard and a LG fridge, plus you can say 21-inch a flat-front TV with a Whirlpool washing machine, suitcases, bangles out here. And the clothing all the embroidered ones for the boys as well girls and for the relatives as well. And a good bed over here with the jewelleries, and good gifts and everything, whatever is possible. [Adam] The moment his daughter was born, the bride's father started saving for this day. No expense has been spared, no detail overlooked. The dowry will have set his family back a small fortune. And for the groom's family, it's bonanza time, gifts all around. The market's just driving dowry, it's-- You know, it's like a new engine to this whole thing of dowry. And it's being driven by the market, it's being driven by consumerism, it's being driven by the feeling that, "Okay, we want this and this is an easy way to get it." [people chanting in foreign language] [Adam] Dowry demands for money, ultimatums and threats can keep going long after the wedding is over, with constant pressure on young brides and their families. [people chanting in foreign language] [Adam] In Delhi, a special police unit has been set up to help young married women who feel harassed. [people muttering] This is the way women are treated? [Adam] It's busier than ever. [speaking in foreign language] [Adam] Day after day, brides come with their parents complaining about demands, about beatings and mental torture. In male-dominated Indian society, women here seem to be fighting back. Sir, go to hell! Get out of here! Behave yourself. [Adam] But they're up against generations of discrimination. [Adam] The dowry was outlawed 40 years ago, but with the booming economy it's now back with a vengeance. Behind almost every case are rows about dowry. The officer in charge is superintendent Vimla Mehra. [speaking in Hindi] One of the main problems is, of course, dowry. And I don't know why it happens, because it seems that more and more women come to us that, "My husband is asking for a scooter or a motor vehicle or some jewellery or some money so that he could start his business." Perhaps, it's one of the easiest way to get money. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] A local journalist, Smita Chaudhary, has been watching dowry in India surging back. Another case has just come in. This woman from Rajasthan has brought her family to the police station. She claims one of her daughters was killed by her son-in-law's family. Anju was burned to death in the kitchen. Her mother wants the dowry back. [Adam] Three children? [Smita] Yes, she had three more sons and the eldest of them has gone mad after that incident. [Adam] Her other daughter is married into the same family and the mother claims she's now being harassed for dowry as well. [Smita] She says I want justice and I want all the money which I've given for dowry. [Adam] How much money did she give? [speaking in Hindi] [Smita] She gave Rs. 250,000 worth of stuff to two sisters. [Adam] That's a huge sum for this family, over 3,000. It's dowry again, and again, and again. What I'm not sure about is why she brought this case up now, her daughter died two years ago. Actually, she's-- Now she feels that there's no hope for this girl, because they're asking for the dowry once again. So there's no hope Hmm. to settle this child. And she'd have to pay out more money if she has to send her back. She's been asked for yet more dowry on top of what she's already paid? Yes. Because they're saying that has been consumed with the first daughter's marriage and so she should pay again. [Adam] The in-laws' family have all turned up and now the two husbands, who are brothers, decide to wade into the argument. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] One says they were never legally married, because the girls were too young. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] The row is all about money. Everyone seems far more worried about the cash than the dead girl. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] In the middle of the arguing and the abuse, a police officer is trying to work out who is telling the truth. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] Everyone has a different point of view and anyone within shouting range gets an earful. [speaking in Hindi] And they've also got is one of the brothers claiming to have had no relationship whatsoever with this woman. Where the truth lies, I don't know yet. [arguing in Hindi] Right. They were married as children. So the marriage is not valid... And that's a-- that's a Rajasthani custom? Yeah. Yes. Alright. But that's not-- that's not valid legally. So there's one guy who saying, "There is no marriage, so what are we talking about?" So you see we have a law, and we have a caste system, and we have a Panchayat, and we have families. And you have dowry and it all makes a mess. And everyone... I mean you know, it is funny, but at the same time it's you know-- a woman has died in this. And they're saying she has burnt herself while boiling milk. Which is possible, but you know, only the women are boiling milk and then they are burning themselves off like-- And always the young ones. The mothers-in-law do not boiling milk and dying. [] [Adam] Tihar Jail in Delhi is the largest prison in Asia. [] [Adam] It's visiting day, but these women and their children are on the wrong side of the bars. All are in prison for dowry crime, in many cases jailed for setting their daughters-in-law on fire. [muttering] [Adam] Anjel is the resident social worker in Tihar. This block is exclusively for mothers-in-law, more than a hundred of them. The numbers are growing all the time. [muttering in distance] [speaking in Hindi] Dowry-related death. [Anjel] That's right. So she's been convicted of killing-- [Anjel] Yeah. Her daughter-in-law, yeah. What's she been accused of? [speaking in Hindi] The daughter-in-law died. [Adam] How did-- how did she die? [speaking in Hindi] [Anjel] The daughter-in-la gave the dying declaration that the in-laws held her hands, daughter-- sister-in-law put fire to her and the husband poured kerosene over her. But the husband is out, the rest of the family is inside the jail. [Adam] Dowry crime was spiraling out of control. And the government passed laws, so that anyone even remotely connected to the death of a wife can be thrown in jail. If a bride dies in the first seven years of marriage, her family can file a charge alleging dowry crime. All the in-laws can be imprisoned. [] [Adam] I came across mothers, sisters, sons, daughters, aunts, even nieces and nephews, all behind bars in Tihar. This is-- [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] Some are growing up in jail simply because their families are here. Who's this? This is the son of one of the women who's in the-- who's in the-- this cell? Yeah. Her sister-in-law died, so this is one of the sisters-in-law, her son. [Adam] Yeah. Raja, Raja, Raja. [woman speaking in Hindi] [Adam] This old woman and her daughter have done two years of a 20-year sentence for murder. The son wasn't charged. The women claim they weren't there when the daughter-in-law died. [Anjel] The daughter-in-law bolted the door from inside and put herself on fire. How is she responsible for her daughter-in-law's death? [Smita] Basically, the boy was very jealous and they were fighting very badly. And the sister-in-law feels that this was a tension between husband and wife and they got involved in it. She feels very lonely and abandoned also, because the son doesn't come to meet her either. He has gotten married again, he has family. [Adam] And then he doesn't come here any longer? [speaking in Hindi] She says that, if I had done something I would've felt satisfied, "Okay, I did it that's why I'm here." [Adam] But-- yeah. But she feels she didn't do anything. And now she's been abandoned here. The so-called accident is always the same. It's always in the kitchen and nobody's ever at home. She says that, yes, I've been committed unfairly that my daughter-in-law herself said that while she was cooking, her nightgown caught fire. She gave that a dying declaration. Everybody here says, "It wasn't me, I'm not-- I'm not guilty." And I-- I'm-- I'm puzzled by what they're doing here then. The conviction is if the dowry-- if the suicide or the death has been abetted-- [Adam] Right, that's enough. That is also a reason for conviction. [Adam] Yeah, right, right. And that reason can be either present very obviously like in the actual burning or a mental state of mind or the pressures that are there on the daughter-in-law. [Adam] So if you're involved in the harassment, in the view of the court, you're part of the crime. Yes. What they say is that, "Look, our mother-in-laws used to taunt us, so we were made to work very hard or whatever. Or we did not have any freedom of doing anything on our own. We were like kind of answerable to everybody in the family." [Adam] It's no surprise that few say they're guilty. But some are behind bars carrying the can for the dowry crime committed by their sons. Because in Indian society, men are simply more important. They can remarry, find a new wife, and get the new dowry that goes with her. To parents' minds, it's ingrained in our system that boys mean that-- it'll-- [Adam] Boys mean cash, basically. Uhuh, yeah. [Adam] I mean they do-- they do at marriage time, certainly. Yes. [Adam] Boys mean cash. Yeah. [] [Adam] Kajal and Anand, the perfect union. Two young doctors from good families, an arranged marriage and a financial deal. It looked like a match made in heaven. Beautiful, upwardly mobile, Kajal Sharma and Anand Singh from a higher caste family in need of cash. So this is um- [Smita] This is Kajal's room. Hmm. [Smita] There are gifts to be given throughout the year at every festival and then when the girl has a child and- [Adam] Yeah. [Smita] Uh, so you know, your parents prepare in advance for all these things. [Adam] So this- she's already bought all this? [Smita] This was for the future, yes, for the entire year. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] Kajal Sharma's parents had spent a fortune on her education. Pretty and clever, they now wanted an upper-class husband for her. And they knew the right young man would cost them thousands of pounds. [woman speaking in Hindi] [Smita] They're her books and that's a teddy she gifted to her mother. [Adam] That-- that-- that teddy bear? [Smita] [Adam] Yeah. Yeah. [speaking in Hindi] [Smita] She used called her mother "teddy bear" only. [Adam] Did she? Yeah, yeah. [speaks in Hindi] [Adam] Yeah. The wedding costs and the dowry were mounting by the day. And Kajal's father even had to turn to her brothers for money. So this was a grand wedding? It was a grand wedding. What are these, I mean-- These are gold and diamond ornaments. And these were what, presents from your family? Yes, they were presents from my family and the relatives to the girl for her marriage. [Adam] In the marriage video, Kajal is on show, packaged up in her wedding finery. This wasn't a love marriage? No, no. But why, in that case? Why-- why push your daughter into a marriage that wasn't a love marriage? [speaks in Hindi] [Smita] They were after us for the marriage and they were so persuasive that it seemed like they really wanted my daughter and that was good enough reason to have her married in that house. And when somebody's asking for a girl, then you presume that they would also treat her well. [Adam] The money thing was really important to them, It was very-- was it? it everything. Like the father, Mr BB-- Dr BB Singh, he had called my father once before the marriage to his house in the morning to discuss that, "What is your budget?" That was the word he had used, "budget". Budget is a financial word. Then at that time my father gave him a good scolding that, "If you want money from us, we will not marry our daughter." Then he-- at that time he said, "Oh, don't be angry. We will not talk like this." [Adam] The Sharmas drew the line at buying a 7,000 Toyota car for the Singhs. But they did eventually settle on a final dowry figure. I'm not very experienced on what goes on, but this was obviously a wedding where lot of effort, a lot of expense was put in. I mean some of these clothes are incredibly ornate. And all these decorations and the jewellery that the bride's wearing. There's a picture somewhere. There we are. With her mother. Mr Sharma is an engineer. Not badly paid, certainly not rich. He'd been saving for Kajal's wedding since her birth, even so he said that the dowry was destroying him. And days before the marriage, new demands for cash. Yeah. 55,000. This I got in cash from bank. Out of this 55,000, 50,000 I gave to him in cash. Then this money, 75,000, this I paid him in cheque. Right. I mean, you-- you were breaking the law doing that, weren't you? Because the law in this country is that you should not give more than Rs. 5,000 of gifts. Nobody follows that law. Otherwise- So that-- that law is ignored? Otherwise, nobody will be able to marry his daughter. Because the rules of the society are different and the rules on paper, they are different. [Adam] You've had to borrow to do this, how many years will it take you to uh, to pay off your debts? This will go all through my life. [Adam] Rest of your life? Yeah. [Adam] The wedding, the dowry, the gifts, it added up, the Sharmas say, about 15,000. And the Singhs were still going on about the car, the Toyota Qualis. But this car that was what, part of the dowry? [man 2] Toyota Qualis. They had asked it before the marriage, but there we had refused. But after, right the marriage, they started behaving in just the opposite way. They started saying, "No, you have to give car. How will my son travel without a car?" [Adam] The Sharmas say they rejected the demand again. Kajal and Anand went to Calcutta and she completed her studies. She complained that Anand was stopping her from revising for her exams. She passed them and they returned to Delhi and moved into the Singh family home. Kajal was still being pressed for more dowry. [man 3] She was crying the day she called me up and she was telling that Anand was creating problems, and he telling that "You have to bring the car. You have to pressurize your parents." [Adam] A day later, the phone rang, something was seriously wrong. It was in the evening of 9th June when her husband, he called me and told me to reach their house as early as possible. I asked him, "What is the matter?" Then he told me on the telephone. [Adam] He told you on the phone? And he said it in a very casual sort of-- [Adam] What did he-- What did he say? He just said... [speaks in Hindi] "We had gone-- I had gone out and she had not taken her dinner, she said, 'I don't want to eat.' So I went out and when I came back, I found her hanging." He just said it as a matter of fact. [Adam] Kajal was dead hanged in her bedroom. On the news her father-in-law was filmed saying, she'd tied a scarf round her neck and then hanged herself from a door handle. Kajal's brother, a doctor, said it couldn't have been suicide. You must realize that it was my brother who first reached there. He reached there at about 7:00. Death has taken place around 3:00, 3:00 or something. No police was-- had been called, not even a medical professional had been called. Because you have to see whether the person is actually dead or not. He may be in a state of coma or something. My brother only called the police. They were not willing to call the police, they were just wanting to take the body and cremate it, so that all the evidence was gone. They had already cut open the ligatures and removed the body. Whatever they say that she was hanging from there and she was hanging from there, that is up to them. We haven't seen anything. [Adam] In spite of getting no help from the police, who they think had been bribed, Kajal's family filed a case alleging dowry crime. Anand and his parents were arrested at their home and taken away to Tihar Jail. The investigating judge appeared to share the Sharma's suspicions. So-- so this, what's it saying here? Uh, this is not a case of suicide simply cited, but has categorical reference to her harassment on account of dowry. So what we've got here is-- is one judge um, rejecting application from Dr. Singh and uh, the rest of the family for bail. And then a few days later, uh, they were released on a technicality. [speaking in Hindi] [Smita interpreting] "I want justice. I've made a mistake, but I'll never make a mistake again. I didn't know them, I didn't recognize them and I want justice now. [Adam] And they feared justice was slipping away, because the Singhs were now out of prison. We've been trying for days to talk to the Singhs, every attempt to get in touch with them. We've been told it's out of the question. So I've come to their house to see if they're in. The Singh family had spent three months in Tihar Jail. Dr BB Singh, a scientist, had been suspended from his job. His son, Anand, had trained abroad as a doctor, but the qualification was not accepted in India and he'd been unable to find any work. [dogs barking] [shouting in Hindi] Dr. BB Singh, I'm Adam Mynott from the BBC. Please just wait. We've come to talk to you about... ...About the issue... We will give you all the answers. [Adam] Well, we-- we--What do you want? we just wanted to discuss some of the issues. You can't take yourself-- [speaking in Hindi] Please. We just wanted to discuss some of the issue-- Thank you, thank you very much. The Singhs gave me their version of events very different from the Sharmas. No torture, no harassment, no dowry demands. She put a-- a scarf, you know the girls, they wear a salwar and this thing and then put it... [Adam] Dr. Singh showed us how he says Kajal killed herself. ...with the neck. She might have sat on this mura and pushed it back. When we discovered her body, her body was not on the floor, you know, it just a little above the floor. So she must have got suffocated, you know, out of... Even this was height. Doctor came with the crime branch, they brought the-- all the three doctors. I mean I'm not a forensic scientist, but that-- that means that there was that-- Yes. that length of-- I mean it seemed-- it just seems very, very odd to me. It seems very strange. I mean why not hang yourself if you want to commit suicide-- You see I don't know this. Why not hang yourself from the ceiling fan? Yeah. Or from a bracket on a wall? Yeah. Why do it in a way which-- No, but that I cannot answer. [Anand] So only she can answer. She was the one to choose this way, only she can answer why did she did this way. I am a doctor, she was a doctor. Only she can tell. How can he or how can I say why the hell did she chose this way to die? I as a doctor can say, yes, this is sufficient height for a person to die. This, any doctor can say. This is very surprising her brother herself is a doctor and-- [Adam] You-- you-- you-- You were her husband. Yeah, I am-- I am her husband. [Adam] Did it not surprise you that your wife could get to this state without you-- without you being aware of it, without you being aware of the fact that she wanted to commit suicide? Listen, this is very surprising for everyone. This is a surprise for their family, this is a surprise for my family, for me. Yeah, she used to get some depression sometimes after the exams. Most of the times, it was only when her brother used to call her up. He like, "You've got to study, you've got to study." She used to say bhaiya , like brother is saying I'll fail. I'd say, "Everything is gonna be alright." I've never prayed to God for my exams as far as I-- like as much I have prayed for her. And I'm like, I have full faith in God and I was very sure she will pass. [Adam] In your opinion was worry about exams that she had enough for her to commit suicide? Except for exam, I don't find a single reason I was the most intimate and close person to her. I haven't found a single more reason that... [Adam] Her-- her-- her family claims she was being tortured, harassed by your family. For what? [Adam] I don't know, that's what they said. And what about those constant demands for a brand new Qualis car? As far as Qualis is concerned, we can buy a Qualis the day we want to. What is the point of asking? And is life of a doctor worth just a Qualis jeep, whatever it is? I don't think so. [Adam] Well-- I mean they say that, you know that Mr. Sharma says he's had to borrow hundreds of thousands of rupees which he'll be paying-- He'll be paying off for the rest of his life. This is his side of story, absolutely his side of story. [Adam] He's lying then? When-- Of course, he is! All this case-- the case from day one, this is all based on lies. She was my wife. I was supposed to live my life, she was my-- supposed to be my partner for my whole-- my life. What will I get by killing her or if she dies? Is this a bigger loss for me or for them? For whom? I asked the media, I asked these people, the police, the justice, whatever. For whom this loss is? What will I get by her death? [Adam] You're someone wrote a card to your wife saying, "I hate you for your shrewdness." Yes. [Adam] Is that-- is that the sort of- [Adam] Relations between... And there are-- There are 20 lines above that which are loving, is it not, if you've seen that card? [Adam] Well, there are printed ones, yes. Yeah, printed ones. If I had not been having love, why would I write that? [Adam] Well, you didn't write it, it was written-- Why would I send it? They were printed on the card. I could've sent other cards. [Adam] So your-- your-- And every-- [Adam] So your relations with Kajal were-- In every-- every husband and-- [Adam] I am, yes. You're married? Don't you have small conflicts with your wife? [Adam] Well, I'm not answering these questions, but then-- Then... Same with me. Like my wife, we used to have small problems, whatever, what is it. She used to get out of head for exams. I said, "Don't worry for exams, it's a part of life. They come, they go." [Adam] So are you not at all puzzled then about why your wife-- your wife committed suicide. Absolutely not. I'm just broken, my family's broken, that is all. There's no puzzle. I'm very sad that-- that yes, at that fateful moment why was I not at home? Had I been maybe at home, I would have again sit with her, I would've consoled her, the things would've been okay. [Adam] The Singhs say Kajal had been unstable. They accused her family of neglecting her and deny any dowry extortion. Anand claims he'd have done anything to save her, but this was her destiny. [] [Adam] The Sharmas say the suicide claims are ridiculous. The thing they're particularly worried about, one of the things is the handwriting on the suicide note. It says, "I'm doing this, because of the tension of my exams. I'm responsible for this, no one is to be held responsible for my death. I've been treated very kindly by my husband and in-laws." Now they say there is no way that their daughter would've written that and also there's no way this is her handwriting. [Adam] The Sharmas are worried that the police have now either lost interest or have been bribed to drop the case. They don't know their way around the legal system. [speaks in Hindi] So they turned to Brinda Karat, a leading campaigner against dowry. [Adam] Brinda contacts the lawyers, saying the case needs a proper investigation. It's a dowry death. [Adam] She's worried the authorities are trying to sweep it under the carpet. Life imprisonment. [Adam] Brinda has seen it all before and she doesn't buy the suicide theory either. It's very, very unlikely that this girl has written a suicide note. And anyway, just looking at the handwriting, it just doesn't match. Even the layperson can make out. It just does not match. Hmm. And secondly, the way that the suicide note is framed, I mean three months, two months after the examination, she's talking about tension in the examination, it definitely doesn't make any sense. And thirdly, from the aspect of the demands for dowry, it's extraordinary. I mean we have seen so many cases, I mean we deal with I don't know how many cases. But a case where they are giving it in writing before the engagement ceremony, that this is what we expect you to bring, I mean it's just so blatant. And it just shows how the social sanction that this practice of dowry has. They thought that you know, they're probably going to buy their daughter's happiness, you know. Dowry really is a practice of the educated and the richer sections. I mean there's just no getting-- It's not related to illiteracy. It's not related to being uneducated. It's very much related to the devaluation of women starting from the upper layers of society. [Adam] Brinda knows the police are weighed down by corruption and bureaucracy. First stop, Inspector Harish Joshi's office. One of the big issue is to get the dowry back. They have a half-hour meeting which we're not allowed to film. When they come out, not much seems to have been achieved. How have you been able to move things on today, then? How? Move things, which things? With this investigation. Well, investigation means we-- we carry on the investigation. What-- what have you said to the Sharmas today? Sharmas? [Adam] What-- what have you said to them? How have you explained to them their case is going? No, I didn't talk to them, I didn't talk to them. [Adam] But you've just had a meeting, you had a meeting with them. What did you say to them at the meeting? [Adam] When? Just now. No, we didn't-- We discussed the case, that's all. [Adam] And when-- Where is the case now? Where does it stand? What is the next move? It's in the court, it's in the court. And the issue of-- of dowry retrieval? That is being examined. [Adam] The Sharmas now fear they're dealing with police who are corrupt and disinterested. [man speaking in Hindi on radio] [Adam] The women's police cell leading the anti-dowry campaign has only one van in Delhi. It answers calls all over a city of 14 million people. [car honks] It's really impossible to tell how many dowry deaths there are each year. The official figure is somewhere over 6,500. Unofficially, you know, it could be as high as some say 25,000. Anyway, the unit's just been called out to another case. All we know at the moment is it involves a woman being burnt. Uh, we should find out more when we arrive in a few minutes. [man speaking in Hindi] Yeah, dead body is here, in the vehicle. [woman muttering] [Adam] The women's cell relies on being tipped off by the local police, who've got to the scene of the crime first. They've already made their minds up, what went on. So, so what-- what happened in this case? Burnt. [officer] Suicide. Suicide. Burnt herself. [Adam] Apparently, the neighbors heard no argument between the couple. And the woman's parents aren't here to claim her death was anything other than suicide. She is saying, "You eat food" to her husband, but her husband refused, because he was ill. Then after, when he went out and he-- [officer] She committed suicide. [Adam] So it sounds an odd reason to commit suicide, because your husband refuses to eat food. This is the husband here? [officer] Yeah, yeah. [woman 1] Yeah, some cases are like this. [Adam] It's often claimed the police are too quick to dismiss a case, because of ineptitude or corruption. [speaking in Hindi] Are you getting the impression that the police have-- have accepted this reason almost without question? I think the police by and large accepts anything which told to them, so they don't have to do much digging and any investigation in depth. They first accept whatever is said and then if somebody makes a noise about its unacceptability, then they dig it up. Then they start digging, right. The paperwork done, the woman's body is driven off to the nearby mortuary. Unless a member of this dead woman's family now comes and reports this as a dowry crime, this death is almost certainly just gonna become another meaningless statistic. Who knows what actually happened to this woman? Suicide? An accident, murder? I have no idea. And the police are apparently not very interested in finding out. The body will be cremated later today. And the husband will go back to his home. Case closed. Women are killed in India in horrifying numbers, because the chance of anyone being prosecuted is remote. And the men can go off and marry again and get another dowry. In hospitals in Delhi, there are case after case of burned women, while dowry demands are getting bigger and bigger. Could you just, literally just tell us what happened? [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] Anoki is desperately ill. She has 80% burns to her body. Her sister-in-law caught her hands from the back and uh, the mother-in-law poured kerosene over her and then set her on fire. [Adam] Anoki is the classic dowry victim. Not pretty enough, her dowry wasn't big enough, and then on top of everything, she gave birth to a girl. She went-- She was sent home forcibly she says for-- three years back. And then her parents went to her in-laws place to say that you should take her back. So they wouldn't do that. So I asked her, "Why did they not take you back?" She says, "They just said that they didn't like me." So basically, you know, her husband's family didn't like her, so they-- they burnt her, set her on fire. Yeah. [Smita speaking in Hindi] [Adam] Anoki's father has been sitting at her bedside for four months. He says, "What's the point of getting the police involved? Nothing would happen, it would just cause more trouble for my family." And they're not prepared to press charges now, because they're frightened of what might happen? Yeah. I mean if they can burn her, then they can do anything. [chattering in background] [Adam] And do you get many cases like this? [muttering] But we have got plenty of cases, yes. Hmm. Of-- of women burned in similar circumstances? Most of the-- most of the cases are-- You do-- Burned by a stove only. Right. I mean, you know this-- this woman claims she was burned by her in-laws. No, she is not saying that. [Adam] Well, she said her mother-in-law is... She's not saying that, she's saying-- [Adam] Well, that's what she's just said to us. [Smita] The statement-- the statement she has given is not that. The police statement is that she's-- it's an accident. It's an accident, yes. What she said,[Smita] [Smita] what she said to No, but she's-- [Adam] That what she says to the police, but what she's saying to us is that she was-- she was burned by her in-laws. I've talked to her, I've talked to her father also. They are both saying the same thing, it's an accident. [Adam] Does it puzzle you, as a burns doctor, that there are loads and loads of these accidents involving cooking? Doesn't happen anywhere else in the world in the same way. [doctor] Yeah, it's not happening in anywhere in the world, but the main thing is that the stove that they're using, I know. that's a peculiar stove. I mean you're doing wonderful things to look after her, but it just seems that you know, there are so many cases like this-- this woman. And why do you think she is giving us a different version events? [doctor] I don't know. Is she frightened? [doctor] I don't know that. I mean you realize when you come and see what is a really sickening case like this, that they're the odds against this sort of thing ever being sorted out. It's totally stacked against... And you've got a girl here who um, said she was burned by her family. She and her father don't want to go to the police. There seems to be a reluctance by the system to investigate it and you're left realizing the whole thing is hopeless. [speaking in Hindi] [Adam] Her father said he hoped she'd recover. But Anoki died a week later. Afterwards, off-camera, the doctor admitted that most of the burns cases were dowry crimes. And Anoki's case remains as listed, a kitchen accident. [siren wailing] [Adam] The women's police cell and its solitary van are out on call again. But they spend much of their time dealing with trivial cases. There's been a report that a woman has tried to commit suicide, because of dowry demands by her husband. But when we arrive an hour later, that story's being disputed. The parents say their daughter-in-law has been using the dowry law to blackmail them. [Adam] The police have little doubt that the in-laws were telling the truth. They go to the hospital where the woman has admitted herself. And they find that she'd taken only two sleeping pills, an attempt to put pressure on her husband to give her money. She hates her in-laws. [Adam] Because the woman alleged dowry abuse, the women's police unit had to answer the call. Valuable hours wasted on exactly the sort of case they shouldn't be dealing with. Meanwhile, serious dowry crime all over the city is ignored. It was like this night after night. The flood of dowry cases coming to the women's cell never stops. Even when they're effective, the police are working with laws that everyone ignores. [people chattering] [Adam] There've been some recent and high-profile cases of young women resisting dowry demands, calling off their marriages on the wedding day. But these are the exceptions. [arguing in Hindi] What are the men doing? Why aren't the young men outraged by this? And they're not! And in fact, precisely because they are not and they're complicit in this practice, which is nothing but the death warrant for a young woman. It's the practice! It's not just, at the end of the time, the killing, it's the-- And if there's no resistance from young men of this practice, that's where really the problem lies. [bell tolling in distance] [Adam] The Sharmas have little reason for optimism. The police appear to have dropped the Kajal investigation. The suicide note hasn't been examined. Dr. Singh's gone back at work. And the Sharmas haven't got the dowry back. [bell tolling] [Adam] The Sharmas, along with other middle-class families had agreed to barter off their daughter. A husband bought in exchange for large sums of money and then constant pressure for more. By agreeing to play the dowry system, they and others contribute to the injustice in Indian society that they say they are fighting. As far as the delivery of justice is concerned, we certainly have a very long way to go, as far as cases and atrocities against women are concerned. There's a very low rate of conviction in India. And we want to ensure that the Sharma case is not just another statistic, to prove how unjust the system is. [Adam] Do you feel like giving up? Not giving up. I am not going to give up. I will fight till the end. Without hoping for the good result or bad result like that. [Adam] Do you think money's-- [woman 2] Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The most important thing is money. [Adam] 'Cause I know your wife has said right from the beginning, all she wants is justice. Will you ever get justice? No, I have got very little hope. [] |
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