New Delhi: The Special Police Unit for Women and Children (SPUWAC) in Delhi buzzes with activity. Every few minutes, a couple is called into a counselling room, a file lands on an inspector’s desk, while another family takes a seat in the waiting area.On a weekday morning, every chair is occupied, women clutch toddlers too young to understand why they are there, husbands avoid eye contact, and anxious parents wait at the reception.Against the backdrop of rising dowry death cases in the capital, TOI spends time inside SPUWAC to understand what happens long before a woman meets her end.According to the National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) Crime in India 2024 report, Delhi recorded 109 dowry death cases involving 111 victims in 2024. While the figures have gradually declined — from 136 cases in 2021 to 129 in 2022 and 114 in 2023 — the capital continues to report the highest number of dowry deaths among the country’s 19 metropolitan cities for the fifth consecutive year.Inside the room at the special police unit, conversations overlap. At a table, a counsellor patiently hears out a woman, while, just a few feet away, an officer tries to persuade a couple to speak to each other. Phones continue ringing with spouses joining virtually from abroad.Amid the conversations, inspectors sift through stacks of documents — medical records, screenshots of chats, photographs of injuries purportedly inflicted during domestic violence, bank statements, call recordings, legal notices and wedding albums. Each paper is an attempt to prove the rot that has set in a conjugal relationship.Women wipe away tears midway through recounting years of their turbulent marriages. Some recall how the taunts began, sometimes within a week of the wedding. Though each complaint is different, one echoes another: of being told by in-laws that they did not bring in enough cash and valuables, of being pressured to ask their parents for more money, of jewellery being taken away for “safe keeping” or of demands that gradually grew from paying for household expenses to bringing in vehicles.One of the first women called in by sub-inspector Seema is from Laxmi Bai Nagar. She balances her three-year-old daughter on her lap as she opens a folder that has grown thicker over seven years of marriage. She alleges she was repeatedly assaulted and ordered to secure more cash from her parents. Claiming that she was forced out of the matrimonial home several times, she says she now fears a cross-case may be filed against her parents. Spread across the table in front of her is a handwritten inventory of jewellery and household articles she says are still with her in-laws. The list is detailed: a gold chain, bangles, earrings, rings, furniture, kitchen appliances, electronics, utensils and a Swift Dzire car.As another complainant begins telling her story, it’s obvious that almost every woman in the room is carrying a similar list. According to police officers, documenting this inventory is crucial because stridhan — property that legally belongs to a woman after her wedding — frequently becomes the focal point of matrimonial disputes.Women who have come to SPUWAC for counselling tell TOI that, at the time of marriage, these items are rarely viewed through the lens of transaction or extortion. For brides and their families, even the most substantial gifts are seen as a daughter’s belongings lovingly sent by parents. It is only after a conjugal relationship fractures that women are forced to reconstruct lists from memory, struggling to prove what was given as dowry and what was not. It is only later, through counselling, that many come to recognise the repeated demands after marriage for what they were: dowry.An hour races past, and a few chairs away sits a woman from Lajpat Nagar waiting for her turn. Married a year ago, she tells a police officer that arguments at home increasingly centred on money, and that her financial independence became a source of conflict. “My in-laws wanted my salary too,” she tells the counsellor. Like many others in the room, she has brought documents to support her allegations that her in-laws pressured her and her family for more money. Her jewellery, she says, is still with her in-laws.Another woman walks in with her mother and 16-year-old brother. In another case, a complainant’s in-laws living in Canada join by phone. Officers try to understand whether the complainants want reconciliation, the dowry articles to be returned or their equivalent value, or separation, before hearing both parties separately and bringing them together for mediation, wherever possible, with the help of Delhi High Court-appointed lawyers.Sub-inspector Hansi says some complainants attend two or three sessions before suddenly going incommunicado. Then, there are husbands who repeatedly don’t appear and families who deny that dowry was ever demanded. As a result, the counsellors are often left wondering whether a complainant has returned to the same home she described as abusive, reached a private settlement, or simply lost faith in the process.
