This is a deliberate attempt to make people aware that the rampant misuse of dowry laws has been acknowledged by World Health Organisation as well. I’m pasting the snippets from the report to highlight those parts from the report for busy readers.

“Daughters-in-law” was the next “problem” in both the groups. While both the groups stressed on the lack of caring attitude by the daughters in law, women of the lower socio-economic class got very vocal about the fact that daughters in law were misusing the law, by reporting harassment by in-laws to the police, leading to maltreatment by the police to the in-laws. (Indian Penal Code sec.498(a), is designed to tackle dowry deaths)

Verbal abuse seemed to exist however, the older people were not very vocal about it. There seemed to be some talk about “some daughters-in-law” speaking very rudely” to their old in-laws. No major details were provided but a glaring fact was of a woman who talked about “someone she knew” who was constantly called a “bloody bitch” by her daughter in law, even while crossing her bed, or wherever she used to be sitting. The narrator had tears in her eyes, and within a matter of a few minutes after this was frankly crying.

Physical symptoms that prevailed in the older persons were of EPI gastric pain, reflux, sleeplessness, anxiety, and depression. These were largely psychosomatic in nature and could not be labelled as a specific physical illness.

The participants of all the focus groups initially talked about “emotional problems”, “lack of emotional support”, “neglect by the family members”, “feeling of insecurity”, “loss of dignity”, “maltreatment”, disrespect” by the family. However, not a single person was willing to label it as “abuse”. They linked abuse to very severe acts of violence, which they all seemed to agree was abnormal and “did not happen in our societies”.

Another glaring aspect seen in the study was use of crime as a weapon for elder abuse. There is a special cell for crime against women where cases of domestic violence and dowry deaths are handled on priority. These are now being grossly misused by the younger daughters – in - law against the parents –in-law.