Dowry deaths in India outnumber rape-murders by 25 times, NCRB data reveals

Nikki Bhati

A young woman’s death in Greater Noida has ignited public outrage and cast a harsh light on the systemic and often lethal violence married women face in India, with official data revealing a grim reality where justice remains elusive for thousands.

Nikki Bhati, 28, was set on fire on August 21, an extreme case that has become a tragic symbol of dowry-related harassment. As reported by HT, police have arrested all four of her in-laws for her murder. Her death is a stark example of a much larger crisis documented in the latest available data from the Home Ministry’s National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

According to the 2022 NCRB data, 6,516 women were officially classified as victims of dowry deaths in India. This figure, governed by Section 304B of the Indian Penal Code, is more than 25 times the number of women killed after a rape or gang rape that same year. The NCRB report, cited by HT, further highlights a vast gap between harassment and reporting, with only 13,641 cases filed under the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961. This discrepancy suggests that the vast majority of dowry harassment cases go unreported until the situation escalates to a fatal extreme.

Even when a death is recorded, the path to justice is fraught with delays and low conviction rates. The NCRB data shows that a staggering 60,577 cases of dowry deaths were pending in courts at the end of 2022. Of the 3,689 cases where a trial was completed that year, only 33% resulted in convictions. More tellingly, of the 6,161 new cases sent for trial in 2022, a mere 99 saw convictions, a rate of less than 2%, underscoring the minimal chance of a swift conviction in cases like Nikki Bhati’s.

While credible data on the prevalence of dowry is difficult to establish, it is often described as India’s most normalised illegal practice. Evidence of its corrosive role in society is nonetheless clear. A 2010 book analysing the India Human Development Survey found that a bride’s family spent on average 1.5 times more on a wedding than the groom’s family, with 24% of families reporting giving major goods like cars or refrigerators as dowry. Alarmingly, 29% of respondents in that survey stated it was common to beat a woman if her family did not provide the expected money.

The most comprehensive data on violence against women, from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) 2019-21, does not specifically link abuse to dowry. However, it paints an alarming picture of the brutality women endure. It found that 29% of ever-married women aged 18-49 had faced physical or sexual violence from their husbands. Among them, 3.3% had suffered severe burns, 7.3% eye injuries or sprains and 6.2% deep wounds or broken bones.

As the HT report indicates, dowry is not the sole cause of domestic violence, but a growing body of evidence confirms its significant role. A 2024 peer-reviewed study published in PLOS One concluded that adolescent girls who reported dowry demands from their in-laws were 3.64 times more likely to experience violence than those who did not.