Study: Over 100,000 Women in India Killed in Fires in a Single Year

The British medical journal has found that more than 100,000 young women were killed in fires in India in a single year — a rate three times men. Notably, the women fell within a 15-34-year age group, the very group often involved in marital disputes.

Women are often doused with gasoline and set ablaze due to disputes over dowries or other grievances. Their deaths are then claimed as kitchen accidents. The U.S. researchers found 163,000 fire-related deaths in 2001, or 2 percent of all deaths in India. Of that number, 106,000, or 65 percent, were women.

Honor killings and caste related killings remain very common in the country.

In neighboring Pakistan, women are also being burned with acid and killed husbands or boyfriends.

Ultimately, it remains the governments who bear much criticism in the failure to prosecute such crimes in greater numbers to create some level of deterrence.
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