INDIA: A special prison wing "dedicated" to mothers-in-law, arrested for demanding excessive dowry from their sons' wives and breaking up marriages in India's capital New Delhi, faces overcrowding due to the "pressure" of new entrants.
The swift inflow of mothers-in-law into Tihar prison's No 6 ward, reserved exclusively for them, is stretching limited capacity to the maximum.
A female prison officer, who declined to be named, said the section, the only one of its kind in the country, presently housed 120, some 40 to 50 more than it had space to accommodate. The mothers-in-law, some under trial and the others serving sentences of up to seven years, constitute a quarter of the total number of female prisoners, she said.
They are semi-literate women in the 50-60 age group from Delhi and surrounding areas. They are isolated from other inmates as they are not considered habitual criminals.
According to the People's Union for Civil Liberties, an average of 18 dowry-related deaths take place daily across India. In 2004 more than 1.42 million crimes against women were recorded, many of them related to dowry.
Most of the imprisoned women spend their days recounting the treachery of their vile daughters-in-law to one another, casual visitors or anyone willing to listen or lend a sympathetic ear.
Malavika Rajkotia, a lawyer specialising in women's issues, said the numbers imprisoned indicated how serious dowry demands had become in consumer-hungry middle-class Indian families. Many parents believed that "squeezing" dowry out of the hapless bride was the quickest way to satisfy their consumer needs.