KATHMANDU, JULY 1

Rautahat resident Kabita Sah, 24 and her two-year-old daughter Arohi were allegedly beaten to death by Kabita's husband Dhirendra and in-laws last night. This news comes on the heels of a report in which Sunsari resident Anurag Rauniyar was arrested in Kathmandu for allegedly demanding five million rupees from the bride's side on the wedding podium.

Police are still investigating these two allegations and the truth will come out only after police complete their probe, but these two cases highlight the problem of dowry that continues to torment women, particularly in the Madhes.

Rautahat police told THT that husband and father-in-law of the deceased woman were absconding, but they were not in a position to tell the cause of death at this point as they were awaiting the post-mortem report.

Social Practices (Reform) Act, 1976, prohibits dowry, provisioning to punish perpetrators of the crime with a jail term up to one year. However, enforcement of the act remains weak.

Lawyer and member of Madhes Province Assembly Kiran Sah said that unless daughters were made equal in terms of lineage and partition of property, the evil practice of dowry would not go away from society, especially in Madhes. Sah said the constitution guaranteed equal property rights to son and daughter, but in Madhes hardly any daughter got equal share.

'The day daughters get education and parental property on par with their brothers, 50 percent of dowry problem will disappear,' she added.

'People are not willing to allow their daughters to obtain higher degree of education and parents often tend to collect the money they spend on their son's education from the bride's parents. These two things are at the root of dowry practice,' Sah added. She said law enforcement agencies often dismiss the case of dowry telling the victims that ' It's your family matter and it will be better if you all settle it within the family,' she added.

Stating that people had flawed view of beauty as they considered fair-skinned girl, with pointed nose beautiful, Sah said parents of dark skinned girls were asked for relatively higher amount of dowry by bridegrooms' parents. 'Parents often look for boys from wealthy family with skills capable of earning handsome salary and this is also a reason why dowry continues unabated,' she said.

Advocate Sunil Kumar Patel said that girls' parents should be blamed more for dowry-related problems because girls' parents always look for wealthy, educated and skilled boys for their daughters. Punitive action alone cannot root out dowry problems. People' views about marriage should also change and child marriage should be abolished, he argued.

Member of National Human Rights Commission Surya Dhungel said that political protection was the main hindrance in checking the practice of dowry. 'Our own human rights defenders have faced threat in Madhes from political leaders,' he said and added that political parties were only giving lip service on the need to root out this social evil.

Dhungel said that the state could end this problem if it carried out multi-pronged activities in a time bound manner.

'The government must say that we will end these problems in five years and the government should carry out its programmes aggressively to end this scourge,' he added.

Dhungel further said that provincial and local governments were also responsible for checking dowry, but the local tiers of the government were doing nothing to check dowry-related problems. He said dozens of non-governmental organisations were working in Madhes, yet dowry was rampant in the region.

Deputy Attorney General Sanjeeb Raj Regmi said that his office had been incorporating dowry problems in their sensitization programmes but the problem required more robust and integrated programmes involving the line ministries, provincial and local governments and civil society members.

A version of this article appears in the print on July 2, 2023, of The Himalayan Times.