Amandeep Kaur Dhillon had won the lottery for them all -- or so her Indian family believed as they wed her to an Indo-Canadian man she'd met only three days before.But, this is Canada... that sort of thing can't happen here... can it?
As they sang and celebrated as they delivered their frightened-looking daughter to a veritable stranger they knew little about, they hoped that she would save them from their difficult life in the Punjab and one day bring them all to the promised land of Canada as well.
But what a deal with the devil it would prove to be. Amandeep was used by both sides in this barbaric bargain, a sacrificial lamb who lived a life of misery in Mississauga -- separated from her child, isolated from the world -- until the 22-year-old was finally found murdered New Year's Day in what may have been a "dowry death," her father-in-law now charged with the crime.
According to India's National Crime Bureau, an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 women die annually in dowry deaths. Few of the perpetrators are ever brought to justice, and the grooms' families go on to secure new dowries as the sons marry again.Hmmmm... 6,000 to 7,000 women... there's a number to keep in mind... the next time people start freakin' out about tasers.
"One of the most worrying aspects of this problem," writes University of London lecturer Werner Menski in South Asians and the Dowry Problem, "has been that such murders and other dowry-related violence have been on the increase and now occur no longer only in Delhi or somewhere far away in South Asia, but also in London, other British cities and in the urban centres of North America."
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