INDIA: Failure of police investigation into alleged dowry death of a woman

[NOTICE: The AHRC have developed a new automatic letter-sending system using the “button” below. However, in this appeal, we could not include e-mail addresses of some of the Indian authorities. We encourage you to send your appeal letters via fax or post to those people. Fax numbers and postal addresses of the Indian authorities are attached below with this appeal. Thank you.]

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information from its local partner organization MASUM in West Bengal regarding the police inaction into the alleged dowry death of a woman by her husband and his friends. Even though there are sufficient clues to identify the perpetrators the police have failed to perform their duty properly.

CASE DETAILS:

Twenty-year-old Ms. Thofa Biswas was the wife of Mr. Sanath Biswas and had been living with her in-laws since 2004 at Vetkia village under the jurisdiction of Bishnupur police station, South 24 Parganas district, West Bengal, India. It is alleged that Ms. Thofa’s father spent a great deal of money at the time of the marriage and gave a lot of gifts and presents to his son-in-law and other in-laws, even going beyond his financial capacity.

After marriage, Ms. Thofa found that her husband, Mr. Sanath, was a notorious drinker and a man of loose character and he used to spent money extravagantly on his bad habits. Due to his bad habits and extravagant life style, he became short of money and took loans from many people from time to time and became heavily indebted. He used to beat and pressurize her wife Ms. Thofa to bring in more money from her father. Ms. Thofa’s father then paid off the loans of his son-in-law to save her daughter from being beaten and to save the prestige of her family but Mr. Sanath did not change his bad habits.

At around 8:00am on 24 January 2007, friends of Mr. Sanath namely Mr. Kishore Biswas, Mr. Sukanta Biswas, Mr. Meghnad Biswas, Chandu Biswas, and Mr. Debdas Biswas found the body of Ms. Thofa hanging from a bamboo clump located around 500 yards far from Vetkia village.  According to Ms. Tofa’s father-in-law, she went missing after she left home to go to the market at around 10:00am on the previous day.

However, Ms. Tofa’s father says that on January 30, he came to know that his daughter along with her husband and his three friends had gone to the hotel at Moukhani garden beside Diamond Harbour Road by motorcycle on the evening of January 23. Having suspicion that the body of Ms. Tofa was found by the friends of her husband on the following morning, the victim’s family gave this information to the police but the police did not investigate about it and have remained inactive.

The neighbors’ version and circumstantial evidences also indicates that it is hardly a suicide case. For example, fingerprints were reportedly found about Ms. Tofa’s neck and few marks of injury on her hand, thigh and leg. Further, some drops of blood were found at the road beside of the bamboo clump, which indicate that she might come to the place with injuries or her body might be moved from some other place.

Meanwhile, when Bishnupur police station was informed about the incident, the police merely asked the informers to bring Ms. Tofa’s body to the police station. Four hours later, the police visited the place where the victim’s body was found, only after local people held demonstration in front of the Bishnupur police station. Ms. Thofa’s body was then brought to Amtala Gramin Hospital, where the body was kept for 2 days for autopsy.

On January 26, Ms. Tofa’s body was sent for post mortem. Meanwhile Mr. Anath Biswas, the victim’s father-in-law allegedly tried hard to make sure that a case was not registered against his son and family members at the Bishnupur Police Station. It is alleged that two local leaders of the ruling political party, Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M), were acting as mediators between police and the alleged perpetrators. The police was allegedly unwilling to register the case by accepting bribe from the perpetrators.

On January 26, the local opposition party Indian National Congress demonstrated in front of the Bishnupur police station over the incident. Due to public pressure, the Bishnupur police finally registered the complaint against Ms. Tofa’s in-laws under section 498 A/306 of Indian Penal Code on January 28 relating to the death of Ms. Thofa.

It is reported that it was not until February 24, that the Bishnupur police recorded statements from the friends of Mr. Sanat, who found the victim’s body, as well as from the victim’s family members, although these statements are essential for the investigation.

The victim’s family suspects that the Bishnupur police may submit a false or weak charge sheet without properly investigating the case.

On 30 January 2007, Mr. Sanat surrendered before the court and was sent to judicial custody after the rejection of his bail application. However, the police have not made any inquiries about Mr. Sanat’s friends who accompanied him and Ms. Tofa to the hotel in the evening of January 23 and found her body on the following morning.

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS:

In 1983 the Indian Penal Code was amended to add section 498-A. This section makes any demand for dowry punishable as an offense of cruelty to a wife, so that any husband or relative of the husband who is guilty of subjecting a wife to cruelty could be sentenced three years in prison and fined. This provision would supplement punishment set forth by the Dowry Prohibition Act. The definition of cruelty in the law includes any dowry harassment that may lead a wife to suicide. The Penal Code was again amended in 1986 to add section 304-B which defined the crime of dowry death to be “where the death of a woman is caused by any burns or bodily injury or occurs otherwise than under normal circumstances within seven years of her marriage and it is shown that soon before her death she was subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or any relative of her husband…in connection with any demand for dowry…”; if such a crime were charged, “such husband or relative shall be deemed to have caused her death.”

Another supplementary provision to the Dowry Prohibition Act was added as an amendment to section 174 of the Criminal Procedure Code in 1983 with the goal of punishing dowry harassers who drove a wife to suicide or to a suspicious death that appeared as if it was a suicide. Section 174 now provides that if a police officer is informed of a suicide, he must make an investigation and draw up a report of the apparent cause of death and injuries to the deceased. If the suicide is by a woman within seven years of her marriage, the officer must submit his report and the deceased body for further investigation.

These provisions in Indian Criminal law are further supplemented by the amendments made to the Indian Evidence Act of 1872 in 1983 and 1986. Section 113-A provides that if it is shown that a woman had committed suicide within the first seven years of her marriage and that her husband or his relatives had subjected her to cruelty, the court may presume that such suicide had been abetted by her husband or such relatives. Section 113-B provides an important presumption: where a woman’s death has occurred, and evidence shows that soon before her death her husband or his relatives had subjected her to cruelty (as defined in the cruelty provision of the Penal Code) or in connection with dowry demands, the Court shall presume that the suicide was caused by such husband or relatives.

Unfortunately, the laws still pose problems that inhibit the prosecution’s ability to convict defendants in dowry cases despite overwhelming evidence suggesting guilt. These problems include ambiguous definitions and terms, evidentiary presumption problems, and other various loopholes that complicate the prosecution of dowry claims.

Due to the societal structure supporting dowry harassment and dowry deaths, it is not surprising that people are indifferent to news regarding dowry related violence. Clearly, a transformative law such as the Dowry Prohibition Act cannot work alone to transform a society structured in favor of the very evil the law attempts to eradicate. Having failed to take into account these cultural emphases on the patriarch’s supremacy, social status, and indifference to dowry related violence, the Dowry Prohibition Act cannot possibly be implemented effectively. Yet, the factors listed above are not all that needs to be considered in enacting a law eradicating dowry related violence. Having taken cultural norms into consideration, the problems with enforcing dowry prohibition laws must now be examined. Based on this analysis, the culture’s resistance to this law enforcement reflects the failure of Parliament to legislate using a socio-economic perspective.

Police officers play a crucial role in reporting and investigating dowry related crimes. The dowry prohibition laws have given them the wide discretion in filing dowry harassment and dowry death claims, reporting these complaints, and investigating them with minimal supervision. (Dowry Prohibition Act 1961). What the dowry prohibition laws have failed to take into consideration is that police officers have long considered any type of domestic violence to be “household matters” that are better left to be privately resolved. Police officers “frequently fail to register offenses and carelessly or dishonestly investigate and prosecute cases.” In addition, social pressures to accumulate wealth and move up in social status result in a regular acceptance of bribes to either register a dowry case, or to dismiss one. Depending on the amount of money the victim’s family or the perpetrator’s family can pay, law enforcement officers will be negotiable in seeking justice. 
In many cases, police officers have used dowry crimes as a tool for their own economic gain. These officers threaten to arrest the husband and his family to extort money from them, or they threaten the family to oppose bail unless the accused family pays a certain sum of money to the officer.

The frequent alteration of evidence may also occur. Cases have occurred where dying declarations recorded by law enforcement differ from other witness recollections. Delaying investigations also allows an arrested husband to remarry while out on bail where police have failed to charge a husband for abetting in his wife’s murder though evidence showed he watched her burn to death. Police are often bribed by perpetrators to alter evidence in ways such as producing false post-mortem and forensic reports, and destroying circumstantial evidence. Indeed, it is no surprise that the majority of defendants in dowry cases are acquitted, and that the usual basis for acquittal is “insufficient evidence”.

It is very commonly reported in India that police officers’ refuse for filing dowry related complaints.   These reports illustrate that many cases of unnatural deaths have been reported as “accidents” or “suicides” although the causes of death seem suspiciously coincidental and akin to dowry related violence. One report tracked from 1997 to 1999 the unnatural deaths of young women in Bangalore and then compared statistics with the police records. This report found that a high number of cases were closed as “accidents” for want of evidence. Out of 550 cases in 1997, the report found 71 percent closed by police as “kitchen/cooking accidents” and “stove bursts” after investigation. Such a high rate of this particular kind of accident is very suspect, particularly since most of the accidents involve daughter-in-laws and occur at very late times of the night, usually long after the last meal of the day would be cooked. Most of the victims’ deaths leave behind small children. Women’s rights organizations, who authored the report comparing statistics with the police, attribute the law enforcement failure to classify dowry deaths to a temptation to reduce workload.

Police corruption is not the only contributive factor to the problem of dowry prohibition law enforcement. Advocates for victims have been known to entice victims and their families into settling dowry cases for high sums of money in order for the advocates to help themselves to a healthy portion of the money.

The social pressure to accumulate wealth and social status leaves young women devoid of support from anyone. When it comes to their future, their advocate, immediate family and members of society will ultimately turn on them for the sake of economic gain.

When judges themselves use their authority to interpret laws against the laws’ purposes, there is little possibility that the laws will ever effect changes in cultural belief systems. It is apparent that the very enforcers of this legislation participate in resisting against it from the police officer level to the judiciary level. Based on these observations, it naturally follows that the dowry prohibition laws must be reformed to address the cultural aspects fostering dowry violence.

The above material is reproduced from The Essential Nexus Between Transformative Laws and Culture: the Ineffectiveness of Dowry Prohibition Laws of India: Tara S. Kaushik, Santa Clara Journal of International Law http://www.scu.edu/scjil/archive/v1_KaushikArticle.shtml

To see our previous appeals on the cases of the dowry death, please go to: UA-007-2007, UA-357-2006, UA-095-2006, UA-91-2005 and UG-016-2006.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write to the relevant Indian authorities listed below and demand their urgent intervention into this case. The AHRC has written separate letters to the United Nations agencies, particularly to the office of the Rapporteur on violence against women, its causes and consequences, Ms. Yakin Erturk, calling for immediate intervention in this case.

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