INDIAN WOMEN FACE OF REALITY

Dowry Death

Dowry deaths are the deaths of young women who are murdered or driven to suicide by continuous harassment and torture by husbands and in-laws in an effort to extort an increased dowry. Dowry deaths are reported in various South Asian countries such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. Dowry death is considered one of the many categories of violence against women in South Asia. According to Indian National Crime Record Bureau, there were 1948 convictions and 3876 acquittals in dowry death cases in year 2008.
Most dowry deaths occur when the young woman, unable to bear the harassment and torture, commits suicide. Most of these suicides are by hanging, poisoning or by fire. Sometimes the woman is killed by setting her on fire; this is known as "bride burning", and sometimes disguised as suicide or accident.

Eve Teasing

Considered a problem related to delinquency in youth  it is a form of sexual aggression that ranges in severity from sexually suggestive remarks, brushing in public places, catcalls, to outright groping. Sometimes it is referred to with a coy suggestion of innocent fun, making it appear innocuous with no resulting liability on the part of the perpetrator. Many feminists and voluntary organizations have suggested that the expression be replaced by a more appropriate term. According to them, considering the semantic roots of the term inIndian English, eve-teasing refers to the temptress nature of Eve, placing responsibility on the woman as a tease, as though the aggressive response of the males was normal rather than criminal.
Eve-teasing has been a notoriously difficult crime to prove, as perpetrators often devise ingenious ways to attack women, even though many feminist writers term it as "little rapes", and usually occur in public places, streets, and public transport.

Bride Burning

Bride-burning is a form of domestic violence practiced in India .It is not the same as ancient and long abolished (formally abolished in 1829) custom of Sati, where widowed women were forcefully placed on a burning pyre of the dead husband (usually a man in his old age) and burnt to death.
This has been treated as culpable homicide and if proven, is punishable accordingly (mostly up to death sentence or life imprisonment)  According to Indian National Crime Record Bureau, there were 1,948 convictions and 3,876 acquittals in dowry death cases in 2008.
Virendra Kumar and Sarita Kanth point out that bride burning has been recognized as an important public health problem in India. They say that it is a historical and cultural issue accounting for around 600-750 deaths per year in India alone. In 1995 Time Magazine reported that dowry deaths in India increased from around 400 a year in the early 1980s to around 5,800 a year by the middle of the 1990s. A year later CNN ran a story saying that every year police receive more than 2,500 reports of bride burning.

Bride-Buying

Bride-buying is an old practice in many regions in India. Bride-purchasing is common in the states of India such as Haryana, Jharkhand,  and Punjab.  According to CNN-IBN, women are “bought, sold, trafficked, raped and married off without consent” across India. Bride-purchases are usually outsourced from Kerala, Bihar, Assam, and West Bengal. The price of the bride (locally known as paros in Jharkhand), if bought from the sellers, may cost between 4,000 to 30,000 Indian rupees, the equivalent of US$88 to US$660. The parents of the women are normally paid an average of 500 to 1,000 Indian rupees (around US$11 to US$22). The need to buy a bride is because of the low ratio of girls to boys. Such low ratio in turn was caused by the preference by most Indian parents to have sons instead of daughters, and female foeticide. In 2006, according to BBC News, there were around 861 women for every 1,000 men in Haryana; and the national ratio in India as a whole was 927 women for every 1,000 men. The women are not only purchased as brides or wives but also to work as farm workers or househelp. Most women become “sex slaves” or forced laborers who are later resold to human traffickers   to defray the cost.

Rape in India

 Fastest growing crime in India and New Delhi has seen more than 10 rapes last month alone.As an embarrassed government gets ready to enact tougher rape laws, the victims continue to face an insensitive police and criminal justice system.Nearly three years ago as India was celebrating the festival of lights, the world dimmed for an 18-year-old as she was returning from work late in the night.Iris was first stalked by four drunken men and then raped by one of them in the heart of New Delhi."The whole night he raped me. My hands were tied and my voice deserted me," Iris recounts the incident.And the trauma didn't stop there.The police first refused to lodge an FIR and when they finally did, no medical tests were ordered.

Instead in a misguided attempt at justice they got her married to her rapist.Two years on, with a child she conceived the night she was raped, Iris is out on the road, deserted by her husband and looking for justice again."Some times I feel I should commit suicide," she says.Iris is part of statistics that have got sociologists worried.The reported cases of rape have grown by 700 per cent since 1953. Last year 20,000 rapes were reported in the country. And India's rape capital New Delhi has seen 10 cases last month alone.
One case was that of a minor girl being raped by a policeman.Sociologists say reasons for this sudden increase is a complex mix of migration, shrinking spaces in cities and the high visibility of women outside their homes.However, law enforcement agencies argue that actual rape cases haven't increased substantially, what has is their reportage.
And in any case since 80 per cent of the accused are known to the victims, it's a crime virtually not preventable.

"Our country has become the hotspot for crime againts women.If we can not protect our womens then we have no right to say ourselfs civilised people."