In the recent assembly elections, we were once again inundated with information about how much of a difference the women’s vote made to the outcome.

It was the tragic death by suicide that has laid bare the daily trauma of the three sisters from a landless household married to an affluent family with demands for dowry from impoverished parents.

It was in Deorala village in Rajasthan on September 3, 1987 that the last incident of sati was reported. Then an 18-year-old Roop Kanwar had committed sati by jumping into the funeral pyre of her 23-year-old Rajput husband, Maal Singh.

It is unfortunate that a measure of confusion has set in about the precise nature and ramifications regarding the immolation - whether self, sati, or otherwise of the 55-yearold Charan Shah on the funeral pyre of her husband at Satpura in Uttar Pradesh on November 11.

The self-immolation by Charan Shah on the funeral pyre of her husband in a remote hamlet in Mahoba district in Uttar Pradesh has elicited a spate of articles dealing with the practice of Sati. Of these, a number of articles by Ms.

As with Bhanwari Devi, gross injustice was committed in the Roop Kanwar sati case, when yet another session court in Rajasthan, acquitted all 32 of the accused in October last year.

The Commission of Sati (Prevention) Act, 1987, is an Indian law enacted to prevent and punish the practice of sati, where a widow immolates herself on her husband's funeral pyre.

The Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, is an Indian law enacted to prevent the giving or receiving of dowry in marriages.