Women will get lifelong dowry protection

Govt is considering removing the existing 7-year limit for registration of offences under Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 9, 2007, 03:24:52 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Women harassed for dowry may soon be able to seek redressal at any time during their marriage. The Centre is considering removing the existing limit of seven years after the wedding for registration of cases under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961.

At present, the Act is applicable only when a woman dies in mysterious circumstances within the first seven years of her marriage. Under the act the accused has to prove himself innocent, instead of the prosecution proving him guilty. A wife’s suspicious death after seven-years is enquired into, not under the Dowry Act, but under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), where the prosecution needs to establish guilt.

This is among a number of amendments to the act suggested by the National Commission for Women (NCW). NCW Chairperson Girija Vyas told the Hindustan Times that all women should be treated equally irrespective of the number of years they had been married. “We have come across cases of dowry harassment of women married for 25-30 years,” she said.

The NCW has also proposed that the victim or her family should have the right to claim the gifts received during the wedding, in addition to the existing provision of seeking stridhan (gifts given by the bride’s parents). “A list of the gifts received in the marriage will be prepared and vetted by the service or protection officers to be appointed as per the proposal,” said a NCW official.

The proposed amendments by the NCW also include deterrents against offering dowry. “We don’t want to punish the parents, but have proposed provisions for deterrence,” Vyas said.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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