Renuka Chowdhury Accused of Fudging “Dowry Deaths” Statistics
Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) spokesperson Swarup Sarkar has accused WCD Minister Renuka Chowdhury of fudging the statistics on “dowry deaths”. According to Mr.Sarkar, Minister Renuka Chowdhury only talked about the reported dowry death cases and deliberately avoided mentioning the actual convictions in “dowry death trials” after false cases are dismissed in the courts.
Minister Renuka Chowdhury had referred to “registered dowry death cases” in Parliament.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/More_than_6000……2852905.cms
“More than 6,000 dowry-related cases are registered on an average annually, according to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the Lok Sabha has been informed.”
According to Mr.Sarkar, 65% of dowry death cases are reportedly false. Interestingly, he refers to the same National Crime Records Bureau Data that Renuka Chowdhury also referred in her statement. According to this data, the trial of 5428 cases were completed in year 2006 and only in 1830 dowry death cases, the courts convicted the accused. So, the conviction rate is 33% and Mr.Sarkar says that all other cases are false as conviction could not take place.
According to Mr.Sarkar, it is misleading to include false/acquitted cases in “Dowry Deaths statistics”. The cases registered include both the real ones and the fake ones, which result in acquittal. Mr.Sarkar wants only the “convicted cases” to be used in media as actual dowry deaths. According to Mr.Sarkar, often false cases can blow up the statistics and mislead the society. “Hence to have clarity it is important to use the number of convictions (ie 1830) as the actual number of dowry deaths”, he said.
One can wonder, who is telling the truth. Is Mr.Sarkar telling the truth or is Minister Renuka Chowdhury telling the truth?
It is to be noted that as per definition of dowry death, any unnatural death of married Indian woman within 7 years of marriage can be investigated as dowry death. This kind of relaxed definition results in classifications of deaths of women due to road accidents, disease, suicides or any unnatural circumstances like drowning etc, without involvement of husband or relatives as dowry deaths. This blows up the dowry deaths data and in 2006, the number of such cases registered was 7618. Firstly, it is ridiculous to consider every death of woman within 7 years of marriage as a death caused by her husband or in-laws. Now, the National Commission for Women wants to remove this 7 years limit in the definition of dowry deaths. If implemented, the death of any woman at any point of her lifetime due to any reasons even without involvement of husband or relatives can be investigated as a dowry death. That will simply blow up the dowry deaths statistics to many million deaths as even the death of a woman due to old age would get classified as a dowry death.
In the meanwhile, seeing the huge blown up false figures of dowry deaths, more and more alarmed parents will abort the “girl child” without realizing that actual dowry deaths are just 1830 in a year for a country with a population of 1.13 billion people.
One just wonders, if Minister Renuka Chowdhury is solving the problems of the society or is herself a part of the problem. Creating panic in the society with a blown up figure of dowry deaths will certainly lead to more “female foeticide” as parents start thinking that, it is better to kill the girl in womb than allowing her to get killed for dowry.” According to Mr.Sarkar, the dowry death figures of 1830 are so low that there is no reason for the society or girls’ parents to feel alarmed. He urged the Minister Renuka Chowdhury to stop creating panic in the society as alarmism and resultant panic can lead to more female foeticide, which she herself is gearing up to fight against.
From another perspective, if Mr.Swarup Sarkar is correct, then it is good news for Indian society. If the actual dowry deaths are only 1830 in a year, then the situation of woman in India is better than situation of women in US, where about 1200 women get murdered by husbands or relatives every year (population of the US is 25% of population of India).
One just wonders, how justified it is to constantly degrade a culture and a civilization by misrepresenting facts and statistics. If the murder of women by husbands or relatives in India is less than similar murders in US, then Indians will soon ask serious questions about the negative publicity that the nation gets worldwide. It is not surprising for one to see that some western nations take pride in degrading other cultures and civilizations just to divert attention from their own social problems of drugs addiction, teen pregnancies and shootings in high schools. Some of these countries also heavily fund biased sociological studies.
It is also surprising to see lack of questioning by Indian intellectuals for decades about these facts or statistics. One also wonders, if the 1830 dowry deaths are really dowry deaths or are they just deaths due to domestic violence and battering?
The relevant National Crime Records Bureau Data:
Number of Cases where conviction took place: 1830 (Real Cases)
Cases that are Acquitted Or Discharged (Total): 3598 (False Cases)
Total cases disposed = 5428 (Real+False Cases)
Total cases registered in year 2006: 7618 (which include both real and false cases).