India recorded 5,737 dowry deaths in 2024 — an average of 15–16 deaths every single day. Two women, two states, two months — same story, different names. Yes, the story of Twisha Sharma and Deepika Nagar. The death cases due to “Dowry”. The family background in both cases was different, but the reason for death was common: Dowry. These are just the cases that got highlighted, but these have been going on for years. In 2023, dowry-related crimes surged 14%, with 15,489 cases filed under the Dowry Prohibition Act and 6,156 deaths. This isn’t a crime of poverty or ignorance; it’s a crime of entitlement, protected by silence.
In the Twisha Sharma case, CCTV footage from the night of her death shows a suspicious three-hour gap between when she was last seen alive and when her death was officially recorded. Her husband has since fled and remains a fugitive, with police offering a ₹30,000 reward for his arrest and a Lookout Circular issued to stop him from leaving the country. His mother secured anticipatory bail; this is how systemic protection of the accused is done! While Deepika’s family spent an amount of 1Cr on her marriage, and this was not enough, her in-laws allegedly demanded an additional ₹50 lakh and a Toyota Fortuner. Hours before her death, she called her father crying, saying she was being beaten. Her post-mortem revealed brain haemorrhage, ruptured spleen, liver, and kidney injuries inconsistent with a simple fall. This is how inhumane people can be in the greed for money. One case stands at a position where three accused are arrested, while in another, none of them is arrested, summarising how tough it is to get justice even when the cases are as clear as water. People believe that dowry deaths occur only in poor or uneducated households, but such cases break that myth and dismantle it!
Five months into her marriage, Twisha Sharma didn’t just lose her life — she had already lost something else. According to her family, she was forced to abort her pregnancy. No headline led with that! Twisha’s alleged forced abortion wasn’t random cruelty — it was calculated. A pregnancy is leverage; terminating it forcibly strips the woman of her last claim to the marriage, to her body, to her future. It signals to her that nothing — not her education, not her womb, not her existence — belongs to her anymore. The violence isn’t just physical. It’s a complete end of personhood. But why isn’t this weapon discussed? When a woman dies, the dowry demand makes headlines. When she’s forced to abort, it gets buried in a medical file. Society treats it as a “private matter,” courts struggle to categorise it, and families on both sides stay silent out of shame. There is no
NCRB column for “forced abortion linked to dowry”, and that absence is not an accident. Dowry violence operates in layers. First, they control her finances, then her movement, then her relationships and when all that isn’t enough, they control her reproductive choices. A forced abortion in this context is not a standalone act. It is the logical endpoint of a system that never saw her as a person, only as a transaction that hadn’t fully cleared. A woman walks into a hospital for an abortion. The paperwork says “voluntary.” The bruises don’t make it into the file. The in-law who drove her there is listed as family support. By the time anyone asks questions, if anyone ever does, the paper trail is clean, and the crime has no name. This is how dowry’s darkest weapon stays invisible: not because it doesn’t happen, but because the system was never built to see it.
The question here arises as to who is responsible for it? Parents of the survivor, her in-laws or the system? I guess everybody in their own ways, but there are legal gaps that need to be covered to at least make the condition better! In 2023, acquittals accounted for 60.4% of trial outcomes in dowry death cases. In 2024, convictions rose to 46.2%, but acquittals at 50.1% still outnumbered them. Between 2006 and 2016, for every conviction, five cases ended in acquittal, and one was withdrawn, meaning only 1 in 7 cases resulted in a conviction. Pending cases more than doubled in 11 years, from 206,000 in 2006 to 515,000 by 2016. 12,343 cases were filed under the Dowry Prohibition Act in 2024, lower than the 15,489 in 2023, yet still alarmingly high. These are just a few gaps mentioned statistically! There are many such that draw attention but aren’t solved! Whosoever is the responsible one, but the system is surely a failure, as justice to many women is still unserved! The husband fled. The mother-in-law got bail. The law stayed silent. This is not a failure of the system; this is the system!
Sixty-five years. One law. 5,737 deaths last year alone. What exactly are we waiting to fix? And how long is this wait going to be? How many more lives are going to be offered instead of money!? None of this has an answer from the system! Twisha was 33. Deepika was 24. Between them, they had degrees, dreams, families who bankrupted themselves out of love. And still, it wasn’t enough. We have been waiting — different names, same story, same silence after the outrage fades. The question is whether India has decided to stop pretending the law alone will fix it. Until the system stops protecting perpetrators faster than it protects victims, every candle march, every viral headline, every parliamentary question will remain exactly what it has always been — noise that changes nothing.
References
- National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) — Crime in India 2024 — ncrb.gov.in
- National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) — Crime in India 2023 — ncrb.gov.in
- National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) — Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2024 — ncrb.gov.in
- The Wire — “16 Dowry Deaths Every Day in 2024, NCRB Data Shows” — thewire.in (May 2026)
- Deccan Chronicle — “Dowry Deaths Continue Across India Despite Strict Laws, NCRB Data Shows” — deccanchronicle.com
- The Logical Indian — “Dowry Deaths Surge 14% in India: Over 6,100 Lives Lost, Uttar Pradesh Tops NCRB List” — thelogicalindian.com (October 2025)
- The Print — “Dowry Crimes Rose 14% in 2023, Over 15,000 Cases and 6,100 Deaths, Shows NCRB Data” — theprint.in (October 2025)
- Factly — “Dowry Deaths Decline, But Thousands Still Die Each Year” — factly.in (May 2026)
- Statista — “Domestic Violence Against Women: India’s Persistent Crisis” — statista.com
- SBS Language — “80 Per Cent of All Dowry Cases in India End in Acquittal” — sbs.com.au
- The Week — “Twisha Sharma Dowry Death: CBI Arrests Mother-in-Law Giribala Singh” — theweek.in (May 28, 2026)
- PTC News — “Twisha Sharma Death Case: What Happened in Those 20 Minutes? CBI Asks Husband, Mother-in-Law” — ptcnews.tv
- FIR No. 133/2026 — Katara Hills Police Station, Bhopal — Sections 80(2), 85, 3(5) Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Dowry Prohibition Act
- Deccan Herald — “Delhi Tops Metro Cities in Crimes Against Women With 13,366 Cases in 2023: NCRB” — deccanherald.com (September 2025
- Wikipedia — “Violence Against Women in India” — en.wikipedia.org • Al Jazeera — “India Probes as No Girl Is Born in Three Months in 132 Villages” — aljazeera.com
- PMC / NCBI — “The Unabated Female Feticide Is Leading to Bride Crisis and Bride Trade in India” — pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
- Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India — Lok Sabha Unstarred Question No. 5086, March 24, 2026 — mha.gov.in
- Legal Service India — “Dowry Death Laws in India: Section 304B IPC, Punishment and Landmark Supreme Court Cases” — legalserviceindia.com
- Live Law — “Dowry Death: No Conviction Under Section 304B IPC If Unnatural Death Is Not Established — Supreme Court” — livelaw.in
- Gulf News — “Dowry Deaths on the Rise Across India” — gulfnews.com