Police are treating their deaths as suicides, a Zaipur police official has said.
Sarder Mina was searching in vain for his three daughters and two grandchildren who had been missing for days from their in-laws’ house in Dudu, a village in the Indian state of Rajasthan, when their bodies were found in an old well.
Kalou, 27, mother of a 4-year-old boy and a 27-day-old baby, and her two younger sisters, 20-year-old Kamles and 22-year-old Mamta, both pregnant, were married to three brothers and lived in Dudu at their in-laws’ home.
The youngest, before their death, had written on Whatsapp: “our in-laws’s family is responsible for our death (…) we did not want to die, but death is preferable to inhuman behavior”.
Four days after the tragic news, Mina, his wife, his eldest son, his other three daughters and his relatives are crying for the three girls and their grandchildren.
Police are treating their deaths as suicides, a Zaipur police official has said. But Mina accuses his son-in-law of abusing and incessantly harassing his daughters for years.
Abuse
Kalou was admitted to hospital in April after being beaten by her husband and family.
“My daughters were abused and returned here. “But despite the violence, they said they should return to their husband’s house and they did,” said their father.
As divorce is considered a disgrace to most families in India, Mina let them return to their in-laws’ house “to save the honor of their family”.
According to him, the in-laws blamed his daughters for their small dowries. “Those who ask for a dowry are not good people,” he said, “they are inhuman.”
The dead girls’ husbands, mother-in-law and sister-in-law were arrested on charges of harassment.
“They were harassed,” says Sonu, another of Mina’s daughters, “but my sisters hoped that one day things would change.”
Dowry provision has been banned by law in India for more than 60 years, but the practice remains widespread.
Dowry their education
“We had already given them so many things,” Mina added, referring to televisions, a refrigerator, furniture; “I am a father of six girls, there are limits to what I can do.”
“I had endowed them with education, this is already difficult,” he continues, showing their student identities.
But the husbands had forbidden the girls to continue their studies and work.
The local press reports daily stories of domestic violence and quarrels between relatives over the dowry with a bad ending.
Last year, an Indian man from the state of Kerala was sentenced to life in prison for the cobra bite of his wife in order to gain control of her assets.
A May court in Kerala sentenced a man to 10 years in prison for pushing his wife to commit suicide because of her dowry harassment.
“Worrying resignation”
According to the National Crime Service, nearly 7,000 married women were killed and 1,700 others committed suicide in 2020 over dowry issues.
A national family health survey found that about 30% of married women in India are victims of domestic, physical or sexual violence.
Women’s rights activists, however, say the numbers are just the tip of the iceberg.
“Thirty to forty women are victims of domestic violence every hour,” said Kavita Srivastava, an activist with the non-governmental organization PUCL, stressing that the figures were based solely on police complaints.
The main problem, according to her, is that Indian society remains apathetic in the face of domestic violence: “this resignation is very worrying.”
