BRIDE BURNING AND THE CRIME OF DOWRY STILL ALIVE

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  "Bride-burning accounts for the death of at least one woman every hour in                                                                India."

Bride burning or bride-burning is a form of domestic violence practiced in countries located on or around the Indian subcontinent. 

A category of dowry death, bride-burning occurs when a young woman is murdered by her husband or his family for her family's refusal to pay additional dowry. The wife is typically doused with kerosene, gasoline, or other flammable liquid, and set alight, leading to death by fire.[1][2] Kerosene is most often used as the fuel.[3] It is most common in India and has been a major problem there since at least 1993

If a bride refused to satisfy incessant demands by her husband and in-laws for money and goods, despite having brought with her the mandatory dowry at the time of marriage, she was subjected to inhuman treatment.

Thereafter, the luckless girl was either starved, administered frequent beatings or simply "jailed" inside her bridal home and denied all contact with her family.
If her family either declined to pay or were simply unable to do so, many in-laws in connivance with their sons forced the bride into an flammable nylon sari, doused her with paraffin and set her alight, claiming she had caught fire whilst cooking.

In the early 1980s such dowry deaths became so commonplace – climbing up to even five a day in the federal capital New Delhi-that anti-dowry activists forced the government in 1986 to change prevailing laws stacked against the bride.
Consequently, all such deaths by burning within seven years of marriage were deemed 'unnatural' and cases of murder were immediately registered against the husband and his parents.

The brides' dying statements were also treated as inviolate evidence, a move that led to a reduction in the number of such cases soon after the law was first passed.
But hundreds of bride burning cases go unreported.
It also takes decades for the simplest of cases in India's overloaded courts to be decided, after which the litigants invariably file appeal petitions leading to further interminable delays and denial of timely justice.

Three years ago India's Supreme Court declared that no mercy should be shown to those found guilty of burning brides for not bringing adequate dowry.
"On one hand people regard women as devi (goddess), on the other hand they burn them alive. This is against the norms of civilised society. It's barbaric," former Justice Markandey Katju remarked in response to an appeal filed by a husband handed a life sentence by a Sessions court for burning his wife.