The pair wed four years earlier, and the woman’s family reportedly paid her in-laws 1.70 lakh rupees as dowry despite their purported demands for more money.
On Thursday night, a 25-year-old lady in Odisha’s Ganjam district was fighting for her life with 30% burns after her husband allegedly lit her on fire after failing to shove her over the terrace of their home. When the wife fled, the husband allegedly doused her in hand sanitizer before setting her on fire.
The woman was able to escape and enter a neighbor’s home before being taken to a hospital in Berhampur. The woman’s family reportedly provided 1.70 lakh as dowry to her in-laws, who allegedly demanded additional money after the pair wed four years ago.
In 2019, the woman’s family reported dowry to the authorities, and the two families were attempting to work things out.
Odisha placed sixth in dowry fatalities in 2021, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau, with 293 incidents. In Odisha, crimes against women increased by 23% last year. Husbands’ or their relatives’ cruelty cases increased 33.62% from 2020 to 2019. The greatest percentage of cases involving women in which trials were still pending in the nation was 98.6%. Only 8.3% of these cases’ conviction rates fell below the national average of 26.6%.
Prasanta Patnaik