The word ‘upbringing’ is a very heavy word to carry when a child becomes an adult. Education can build careers, but upbringing shapes beliefs. In many families, the way people think has changed towards a new and modern lifestyle, but there are still some families that exist with a traditional mindset. These types of families build sons who are taught entitlement and the idea of hurting the self-esteem of a woman by asking her family for dowry.
The dowry system is considered a system that not only hurts the self-esteem of a girl but also questions the upbringing of a son. This system is said to cause many deaths of wives after entering the house of their in-laws. It is a sort of price the daughter’s family pays for giving away their daughter. The main question that arises here is: what type of system was created in earlier times?
A related incident took place in May in the cities of Bhopal and Noida. In May 2026, two young women died under deeply disturbing circumstances in India, reigniting a national conversation about dowry violence that the country has struggled to confront for decades. Twisha Sharma, a 33-year-old MBA graduate and former model, was found dead at her marital home in Bhopal's Katara Hills on May 12. She had married lawyer Samarth Singh just five months earlier. Her family alleges that she endured relentless mental torture, dowry harassment, and a forced abortion at the hands of her husband and his mother, a retired district judge. The son has been told not to leave the city until the case is solved, and her mother has received anticipatory bail.
Another incident involved Deepika Nagar, a 24-year-old B.Ed graduate from Greater Noida, who died on the night of May 17 after allegedly falling from the terrace of her in-laws' three-storey home in Jalpura. She had married just 14 months earlier, with her family spending nearly ₹1 crore on the wedding. Despite this, her in-laws allegedly demanded an additional ₹50 lakh and a Toyota Fortuner. Before her death, she called her father and told him everything, including that she was being beaten there. When the postmortem report came, it was found that she had a brain haemorrhage, ruptured spleen, liver, and kidney injuries, inconsistent with a simple fall.
These two cases are not just cases; they are the reality of some parts of India where a woman is still beaten to force her to ask for dowry from her own family, where educated and well-known families still have a backward mindset that leads to a woman’s death. It is still suspicious whether the Twisha Sharma incident was a murder or a suicide. Madhya Pradesh and Noida are considered places where great minds develop. But what is the point of these minds if they lead a person to question her own death?
It has been decades since every woman has been fighting for the right to remove dowry from every part of India. A high amount of dowry practice is still followed in villages of Rajasthan and Gujarat, and when people are told to stop this, they revert by saying it is a “pratha” that has been carried forward for many years and should be supported.
But who is considered responsible for this practice? The honest answer would be women themselves. A woman is always taught to say yes when asked, but today is not that generation where you are expected to suppress your point of view. If you think you have one, you need to speak for yourself. The same thing applies here. The world can change, but this system may never change. These two incidents may be stories for today, but after some days, people will forget about them, and this process will continue.
When a man stands up against the dowry system, he is often stopped and told that this is the right thing to do. But only a woman can truly understand what it is like to arrange money in lakhs or crores, or arrange a car or any such thing. If women do not stand up against this, nothing is going to change because that is how our India has been shaped.
Taking a stand against an entire system drives the population crazy, and they often strike back against it. But when a group of people stands against something, change happens. That change is now required by those women who either have been through or are currently living in this situation, because what kind of system is this that kills a daughter informally with just words and actions?
Actions speak louder than words. Parents raise a daughter with utmost love and care because they know that one day she will leave for marriage. But what happens to them when such an incident takes place and shatters an entire family within seconds?
Today, the body of Twisha Sharma is kept in a freezer at AIIMS Bhopal, and her family is demanding the arrest of the people behind this. In Noida, the husband and father-in-law have been arrested.
But these actions will not do anything until and unless this system is completely stopped.
Take action. Save a daughter from going through the same hell.
References:
- NDTV News
- The Times of India
- Hindustan Times
- Dainik Bhaskar