Dowry deaths or suicides?

CHENNAI: Recently, 28-year-old R Sushila was admitted to the burns ward of the Kilpauk Medical College Hospital (KMCH) after she tried to immolate herself, When she died a week later with 90% burns, it was recorded as a suicide. However, nurses said she had told them she committed suicide unable to bear the pressure and harrassment from her husband and in-laws for dowry.
In 2010, according to the state crime records bureau only 13 dowry case deaths were recorded in the city while the state commission for women recorded just one but the burns ward at the KMCH tells a completely different story."In some cases the husband or in-laws burn the woman and bring her to the hospital where death is recorded as an accident or suicide," says head nurse Sister Amala.
Doctors and nurses in the burns ward say 90% of the victims in the cases they see in a day are women, most of whom have committed suicide because of harrassment at home and most have been married for less than five years.
"We get around eight burns cases everyday and of those five are women and they are mostly reported as cases of accidents or suicide. It is only when we talk to the women that we realise these are cases of dowry harrassment by the husband and the relatives," said Dr V Jayaraman, head of the burns ward. A majority of these deaths, nurses say, are recorded as suicides by the husband and his relatives and in some cases by the woman herself.
Given that Tamil Nadu and Chennai have the maximum number of women committing suicide by self-immolation in the country this is not hard to believe, say sources.
Whenever a death of a woman is reported within seven years of marriage and the police find it has not occurred under normal circumstances, an inquiry by an Revenue Divisional Officer is ordered.
"RDO enquiries were introduced as an additional measure apart from police enquiries on the insistence of women's rights groups who felt the police was discouraging filing of FIRs and not doing a thorough enquiry. If RDOs find something suspicious they can report their findings to the police," says advocate Sudha Ramalingam. She, however, says an RDO enquiry is not taken seriously and in most cases not done immediately. "In most cases, the RDO never visits the site of crime nor does an investigation. It is usually the clerks or the lower level staff who do the inquiry. This probably explains why the few number of cases which have been reported as dowry deaths," she adds.
Feminist and activist V Geetha believes dowry has become a preferred public expression for various kinds of private violence against women. "Though women face different kinds of harrasment like sexual violence and domestic violence, most prefer to give it the name dowry as it is seen as being socially acceptable," she says. She says it is necessary to address all problems faced by women rather than just looking at it as an issue of dowry.