Table 2 Legal provision for women in India who suffer burns

Section 174

Response to suicide, homicide, accident, or death under suspicious circumstances.

Applied particularly to women within seven years of marriage.

Duty to report incident to magistrate empowered to hold inquests.

Duty to proceed to the place where the body of the deceased lies, and, in the presence of two or more residents of the neighborhood, make an investigation and draw up a report of the apparent cause of death, describing signs of injury and how they appear to have been inflicted.

Section 176

Duties of Magistrate empowered to hold an inquest.

Amended in 2005 to apply to death in custody.

Indian Penal Code, 1860

Charges

Section 304

Punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder.

If the act that led to death was done with the intention of causing death or injury likely to cause death, or with the knowledge that it was likely to do so but not the intention of causing death.

Minimum sentence: fine.

Maximum sentence: imprisonment for life or 10 years.

Section 304B

Punishment for dowry death.

Death by burns, injury, or in other abnormal circumstances of a woman within seven years of marriage, if it is shown that soon before her death she was subjected to cruelty or harassment by her husband or his relative in connection with a demand for dowry.

Minimum sentence: 7 years.

Maximum sentence: imprisonment for life.

Section 306

Abetment of suicide.

Minimum sentence: fine.

Maximum sentence: imprisonment for 10 years.

Section 498A

Cruelty by husband or his relative.

Willful conduct that could drive a woman to suicide, serious self-harm or ill-health, harassment with a view to the unlawful acquisition of property or valuable security, or harassment when she does not meet such demands.

Cruelty defined as willful conduct of a nature likely to drive the woman to commit suicide or to cause grave injury or danger to life, limb or mental or physical health; or harassment with a view to coercing her or any person related to her to meet an unlawful demand for property or valuable security, or on account of a failure to meet such demand.

Minimum sentence: fine.

Maximum sentence: imprisonment for 3 years.