“Each year, thousands of young Indian women are doused with gasoline and burned to death because the groom or his family felt the dowry was inadequate.”

via Indian government crime statistics show one Indian woman killed every hour over outlawed dowry payments.

There’s strong suspicion that a distant relative of mine, a woman whose wedding I attended in 1981, met this fate. Only a few years later, I learned she had been killed in an accidental kitchen explosion. I got the distinct impression, even as young teenager, that nobody believed it was accidental.