Nikki Bhati and India’s Dowry Curse

Four decades after India amended its dowry law, the case underscores why parents must be held as accountable as in-laws in a culture that sacrifices daughters.

When news broke that Nikki Bhati, a young woman from Uttar Pradesh, had been burned alive in her own home, the headlines were predictably lurid. What jarred more was the spectacle that followed. At her funeral, the man accused of orchestrating her murder - her own father-in-law - lit the pyre even as Nikki’s own parents stood by. Their apparent indifference was startling. They had long known of the abuse she endured. Yet, rather than shelter Nikki, they sent her back to her husband and his family, sealing her fate.

Nikki faced repeated physical abuse from her husband and mother-in-law, and her parents were aware of these incidents, as well as her husband’s alleged infidelity. Despite a panchayat being called and an agreement for her husband to stop the abuse, Nikki’s parents sent her back to her marital home. They did not want to take her back. To add to this torture, Nikki and her older sister, Kanchan, married to the elder brother of her husband, were reportedly forced to hand out 50 percent of their earnings from the beauty parlour they ran within the home, followed by forcing them to stop the business as it was bad for the family’s reputation.

Way back in 1988, this journalist had written on dowry deaths as a big chapter in a book. The cases cited in it are evidence that there has been no impact on dowry deaths over the past forty years despite the Dowry Prohibition Amendment Act 1984.

Back then, the toll was already gruesome. Between May and June 1985, at least six young women in Mumbai alone were reported dead as a result of harassment by their husbands or in-laws. The victims came from different communities and income groups, but their fates were identical. All were newly married; all died before turning 25. In only one of those cases did the police book a mother-in-law for murder. The rest were charged under lesser provisions of the Indian Penal Code. None led to convictions.

Even those arrests were made only after grieving families hounded police officials for action. As the late Sheela Barse, a pioneering journalist and activist, observed at the time that the law was too narrow. Section 498A targeted only the husband and his relatives. But, she argued, parents of the bride were often complicit, if not directly then indirectly, in their daughter’s suffering and eventual death.

Complicity takes many forms. Affluent families feed the very practice they denounce, showering their daughters’ weddings with lavish dowries. Poorer parents accede to demands from grooms’ families, pawning land or jewellery to marry off their daughters. Once married, daughters who return home bruised and battered are often told to endure it in silence. Parents dread the stigma of a separated daughter more than her suffering.

The case of ShailaLhatkar in Pune illustrates the point. Her husband, a qualified engineer, had already been divorced once. Shaila complained repeatedly to her father about the violence she suffered. Each time he sent her back, insisting it was her duty as a Hindu wife to remain with her husband. She died soon after, burned by her in-laws.

Sometimes the abdication of responsibility is even more grotesque. In Delhi, Shani Kaur was subjected to horrific abuse: beatings with iron rods, branding with hot irons, and repeated expulsions from her in-laws’ home. Her mother knew all this, by her own admission, but did nothing. Only after Shani died of burns did she turn to feminist groups demanding justice.

This selective outrage infuriated Barse. She called for broadening the law so that parents who knowingly abandoned their daughters to abusive marriages would also be held accountable. That demand remains unheeded. The law remains tilted towards punishing in-laws, while leaving untouched the deep-rooted social expectations that drive parents to disown their daughters’ suffering.

Nikki Bhati’s case underscores the point. Both she and her sister confided to their parents about their husbands’ violence. But the parents were more preoccupied with defending themselves against a dowry complaint filed by their own estranged daughter-in-law.

Activists in the 1980s made the same observations. “Every case of unnatural death of a woman may not be the result of the pernicious practice of dowry,” noted Chandrakanta Dixit, then a young feminist campaigner. “But is it not instructive that stoves and gas cylinders burst mainly on young, married housewives while male cooks and older housewives escape miraculously every time?”

India has changed in many ways since the 1980s. Its cities gleam with new wealth. Its women lead companies and win Olympic medals. Yet the old, hidden cruelties remain. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, more than 6,500 dowry deaths are reported each year - almost 18 every day. The true figure is likely higher, given underreporting and the reluctance of police to classify cases as dowry-related.

While laws banning dowry and punishing cruelty within marriage exist, they are riddled with loopholes, plagued by shoddy investigations and weak prosecutions. Social reform has faltered too. For all the rhetoric of ‘Beti Bachao, Beti Padhao’ (Save the Daughter, Educate the Daughter), the stigma of bringing a married daughter back home remains entrenched.

What is required is not just tougher statutes but a cultural shift. Parents must be held accountable when they knowingly send their daughters back into abusive marriages.

The flames that consumed Nikki Bhati are the same that consumed countless brides before her. India’s dowry system may be formally outlawed. In practice, it is alive, well, and murderous.

(The author is a noted film scholar and a double-winner for the National Award for Best Writing on Cinema who has also written extensively on gender issues. Views personal)