Aburning issue conveniently ignored

Gita Aravamudan

Unnatural deaths of married women are reported everyday in the media. But instead of spurring authorities to action, the deaths merely become part of statistical date.

The truth commission organised by Vimochana and the National Law School to probe into the unnatural deaths of women in marriage was going on in full swing at the institute of Engineers Hall in Bangalore.Distraught parents of murdered women who had come from as far a way as Gulbarga and Dharwad thronged the lobby. Meanwhile, three married women died of burns at Victoria Hospital.Dowry had claimed its latest victims.

Gowri, a 21 year old from Mandya died in the burns ward on August 15. She was set a blaze allegedly by her husband and mother-in-law because she had only paid up Rs.30,000 of the promised Rs.50,000 dowry. On other bed, Waheeda (28) died because she could not pay Rs. 1 lakh as dowry her husband had demanded. The third victim Rajamma (26) apparently set herself on fire, "because she had an unbearable stomachache".

At the reception desk of the Truth Commission, young activist Pratima from Vimochana was fretting as we leafed through the two registers starkly marked "Death" and "Harassment". She usually spends her days at the burns ward of Victoria Hospital. " I don't know how many cases are going to get wrongly registered as suicide," she said."We are struct here for three days. There is no one from our side to advice the parents at the hospital."

The registers contained the sad details of new cases jotted down by families who had come after reading the reports of the commission in the papers. In the garden, a teenaged brother, and illiterate mother and an uncle debated on whether they should actually put their complain down in writing. Would the safety of the burnt women's unmarried younger sister be jeopardised? Her in-laws were after all, related to a policeman.

Inside the two halls, a dozen eminent "jurists" were listening to gruesome stories of violence and death narrated by the families of the women who died. Families who had gone over the stories dozens of times before. Who had run from hospital to morgue to police station to politicians vainly searching for an elusive justice.

Activists from Vimochana and the National Law School students had picked these families up from remote villages and districts where they had gone to collect data on unnatural deaths. Among the most gruesome of those listed for hearing was that of Kalai Selvi, the only daughter of a landlord and panchayat president from a village in Tamil Nadu. "She was subjected to the most inhuman torture, Madam," said G.Damodaran, an ex-corporator and the uncle of Kalai Selvi as he stood outside the room waiting to be called." Her body was covered with scars and cigarette butt burns."

When Kalai Selvi was found dead in her husband's house she had an electric wire wound around her neck and connected to an electric outlet.She had died of an accidental electric shock, her husband claimed.Actually the power supply had not even been connected to the electric outlet. She had had been strangled with the cord.During the inquest, the Tahsildar noted 14 injuries on her body, on her shoulders,her lips,her thighs,her head and even on her tongue.The cigarette butt marks were everywhere.

Kalai Selvi's husband, who apparently has political connections, has now not only managed to get out on bail but has also married again; this time the daughter of a policeman. A few days after he brught his new bride home, a young woman from his past turned up demanding support for the child he had fathered." After the ugly street fight which ensued his father comitted suicide in shame," Damodaran said.

If this were a cinema script, it could have been dismissed as impossible.But Kalai Selvi was real.A beautiful young woman brought up by loving parents in a village near Kanchipuram and married to an outwardly handsome man in Bangalore.So was Shoba, the 13 year old daughter of agricultural labourers from Chintamani who was married to her cousin living in Byapanahalli. She died just two years after she was married.Her parents too had coughed up dowry time and again. Yet she was beaten.And finally burnt by her husband,"because she refused to cook food". Her parents now stood dry-eyed, narrating their story.

Other stories sounded the same."She came home with bruise marks on her body...we gave as much as we could...she refused to go back...we told her to 'adjust' for the sake of the children...its a same to have a married daughter coming back home..we arrived too late...they told us the stove had burst when she was cooking at one o'clock in the night...everyone asked for money..the hospital staff.. the police...they wouldn't give us the post-mortem report...they deleted crucial evidence.

The jurors interrupted:"Don't you feel you could have saved your daughter's life by refusing to pay? She would be alive now if you had allowed her to stay with you."But their daughters were dead.And now they were wandering in a maze.

Should the case have been registered under 304(B) which deals with dowry deaths or should they have insisted on homicide? How could they get themselves heard? How long would it take? The public prosecutors kept changing. Evidence got lost.All the time around us women were continuing to die of cooking accidents in the middle of the night.

Parting thought: Unnatural death of married women in Karnataka - 3826 died in accidents in 1997. Of these, 1,715 or 50 percent of them were fire accidents.