NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court observed Monday that anyone convicted of killing a woman over her dowry deserved to hang.
‘In India hundreds of innocent women are being burnt to death,’ the court said in a bail hearing for Mahender Kumar Gulati, a man convicted of killing his wife.
‘It is an uncivilised act. How can we do it? We should hang such persons,’ Justices Markandeya Katju and Deepak Verma said in a written observation quoted by the Press Trust of India.
Although India retains the death penalty, executions are very rare and reserved for the most extreme cases. The last hanging took place in 2004.
The practice of demanding and providing a marriage dowry — in the form of cash, jewellery or expensive gifts from the bride’s family to the groom — was prohibited in 1961 but remains prevalent.
Cases of women being harassed or set on fire if the dowry is deemed insufficient by their in-laws are also widespread.
‘You have burnt to death a woman by pouring kerosene. How can you do such a barbaric act? It is an uncivilised act,’ the court said in Gulati’s case.
‘We will not grant you any relief. You can try your luck before another bench.’
According to women’s rights groups, an annual average of 7,000 cases of dowry deaths occur in India.
Under Indian law, if a woman dies of ‘burns or bodily injury’ in abnormal circumstances within seven years of her marriage and is proved to have been harassed for a dowry, the case is deemed a ‘dowry death.’
At present, those convicted of killing women under such circumstances face a sentence ranging from seven years to life in prison
| Source: Dawn |
