Why Dowry-Related Crimes Are Underreported

In 2022, India recorded 13,479 dowry law violations, up 34% since 2014, as per the National Crime Records Bureau. That same year, the NCRB recorded 6,450 dowry deaths--down 24% since 2014. Four states--Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan--account for nearly 65% of India’s dowry deaths.

In recent months, dowry-related violence has brought the issue sharply into focus. Last month, a 26-year-old woman was killed allegedly by her husband in UP’s Sirsa. Reports suggested the woman complained of domestic abuse and dowry harassment to her parents. Dowry crimes continue to be reported from across the country. Earlier that month, a 32-year-old woman was found dead in Lucknow, and her parents alleged that she was killed following dowry harassment. In July, a 24-year-old woman died by suicide in Baghpat after alleged dowry harassment. Harassment or death cases have also been reported from Vellore, Thiruvallur and Tiruppur districts of Tamil Nadu.

Research suggests that victims of dowry-related harassment do not report it due to fears of stigma, attitudes of family and law enforcement officials, limited awareness and coercion. Further, evidence suggests that dowry deaths are misreported as accidental deaths, thereby underestimating the number of women who die following dowry harassment.

Definitions and procedures

Under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, dowry is defined as “any property or valuable security given or agreed to be given either directly or indirectly”, by parents or any other person “to either party to the marriage”--at any time before or after the marriage. The Act provides for imprisonment for five years or more.

A dowry death is when a woman dies of “any burns or bodily injury”, or where death occurs “otherwise than under normal circumstances” within seven years of marriage, where dowry harassment is established. This is punishable by prison terms ranging from seven years to life.

In cases where a single FIR lists multiple offences, the NCRB records only the “most heinous” crime as per the “principal offence rule”, which often means dowry offences are subsumed under charges like murder, explained Indulekha Guha, assistant professor at Azim Premji University and a researcher on crimes against women.

Further, dowry crimes involving Indian women abroad also remain outside the purview of NCRB data, Guha said. “Such cases fall under the jurisdiction of the country where the crime occurs, while NCRB takes into account FIRs lodged only in Indian police stations,” said Peter Mayer, associate professor of politics at the University of Adelaide.

Why dowry crimes are underreported

A 2025 study on dowry crimes, authored by Rambooshan Tiwari of Banaras Hindu University and Shubham Narayan Dixit of Indira Gandhi National Tribal University, said that the gap between dowry cases and deaths occur “when a death is reported, but not the practice of dowry”.

Tiwari told IndiaSpend that many incidents still go unreported due to stigma surrounding dowry crimes. Citing his study, he said that dowry crimes are more likely to be reported after the termination of a marriage. “The increasing number of divorces and failures of marriages may have resulted in a rise in the registration of dowry crimes, which previously went grossly underreported.”

Other research echoes this: The numbers are likely to be “a gross underestimate” because many crimes against women go unreported on account of stigma, a 2015 paper in the Journal of Biosocial Science found.

Three in five married women who registered domestic violence complaints also reported dowry harassment, according to a 2023 article in the journal Violence Against Women. The authors studied court records data and conducted in-depth interviews on the implementation of India’s Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005.

Trupti Jhaveri Panchal is an assistant professor at the Centre for Women-Centred Social Work at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, and lead author of the article.

The loss of a woman’s livelihood and social status when she challenges toxic relationships and patriarchy adds to the mental health issues of dowry harassment survivors, a 2022 article in the Journal of Loss and Trauma noted. Women undergo “severe mental health concerns such as suicidal ideation, fear, and loss of identity due to dowry harassment”, the article found.

The “difficulty in accurately identifying and naming suspicious deaths caused by burning, drowning, or poisoning as dowry deaths” also plays a part in the persistence of the problem, a 2014 paper in the journal Trauma, Violence and Abuse noted. Neighbours or the police are reluctant to get involved in what is considered “family matter”, it said.

“Even after the legal recognition of crime, sometimes the concerned legal authorities consider violence against women in the home a private family matter,” a 2011 study in the journal International Health found. “Apart from the attitude of these authorities, the transformative law, which is supposed to make social transformation, has not considered the social customs, beliefs and values that would resist enforcement of these laws.”

Many burn injuries and deaths inflicted by partners, in-laws or by women themselves are classified as accidents, as IndiaSpend reported in January 2017 based on a study which analysed 22 cases of burn injuries among women, of which 15 were reported as accidents. The investigation revealed that only three were accidents, while others were self-inflicted or caused by others. The study also revealed that 19 of 22 women were, at the time, experiencing domestic violence.

“At least 50% of all the suicides among women could be dowry related, but they are underreported because the parents of the girl are involved in dowry giving, and giving the dowry is also a crime,” Donna Fernandes of Vimochana, an NGO working for women’s rights, had told us.

As many of these deaths occur within the marital home, “it is often difficult to obtain a clear history”, a 2020 article in the Journal of Forensic and Legal Medicine says, illustrating the difficulty in recording dowry deaths as such. “If dying declarations are to be taken from the victim they need to be carefully recorded in an environment where there is no chance of coercion from the perpetrating family members as this may render such statements useless for subsequent prosecution purposes.”

Guha said that crimes with lesser intensity are more likely to be underreported even at the police station level. She said that a police officer may not be entirely familiar with the principles of the Dowry Prohibition Act, whereas a heinous crime like dowry death is more likely to be reported.

To ascertain the real extent of dowry crimes, Guha suggested that NCRB figures be cross-verified with judicial data published by district and sessions courts, as all Dowry Prohibition Act violations and dowry deaths that go to trial are recorded by courts.

UP, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh recorded 57.6% dowry deaths in 2022

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan had the highest number of dowry deaths almost every year between 2014 and 2022, NCRB data show.

In 2014, UP, Bihar and MP recorded 4,575 dowry deaths. By 2022, this number fell to 3,713, but they still contributed 57.6% of all dowry deaths that year.

West Bengal and Rajasthan, which had amongst the most dowry deaths, have seen minimal reporting of cases under the DPA over nine years.

In 2022, six states and three Union Territories—Arunachal Pradesh, Goa, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Ladakh, and Lakshadweep—reported no dowry deaths. None of them recorded a single case of Dowry Prohibition Act violation either.

But this does not rule out the possibility of dowry crimes. In the same year, West Bengal did not record any dowry crimes either, yet saw 406 dowry deaths.

Why dowry deaths cluster in Hindi heartland

The absence of dowry crimes in most northeastern states, according to Tiwari and Dixit’s study, is due to the “dominance of tribal culture where the custom of dowry is either non-existent or very loose.”

The custom of dowry is more entrenched among Savarna and intermediate castes, particularly in the Hindi-speaking belt, Tiwari told IndiaSpend. He explained that this persists because, in many agriculturally fertile regions, families are unwilling to let daughters inherit land. “In regions with high (low) land fertility, the demand for dowry may be relatively high (low).”

The study found that the hotspots of dowry deaths are the middle Ganga plain region of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, and the deltaic regions of the eastern coastal plain (including the Ganges-Brahmaputra, Mahanadi, Godavari, Krishna, and Kaveri deltas), which also report relatively higher numbers of dowry deaths.

Guha said the social and financial status of a family plays a crucial role. She suggested that the nature of dowry practices in certain southern states’ kinship systems with cross-cousin marriages may be more transparent and less forced, due to which the likelihood of violence may be less.

In his 2022 study tracing the origins of dowry crimes, Mayer attributed the interregional differences to the variation in kinship systems, agricultural practices, and demographic growth.

He analysed the 2011 NCRB data and the 2011 Census--the latest conducted in India--and found that women’s migration after marriage and the average household size in a region are positively correlated with dowry deaths.

This means dowry deaths are more likely in regions where women migrate to their husband’s homes after marriage and where families tend to be larger. He said that household size is typically higher in the BIMARU states--Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh, where village exogamy is common.

The study says that dowry murder rates are lower where women’s economic value is higher.

Mayer suggested that women’s economic value has been historically high in southern states, where women play a key role in paddy cultivation. In contrast, in the northern states, men largely carry out wheat cultivation, with limited role of women--often leading to their social and economic enclosure. He said that in the present context, women who bring both “economic contribution to the family” and “social capital” are less vulnerable to dowry crimes.

IndiaSpend reached out to the Union ministries of women and child welfare and home affairs for comment on the initiatives being taken up to address the factors contributing to underreporting of dowry-related crimes. We will update this story when we receive a response.

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