Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Death & Indian Women

From News Day and the Star Tribune:
"More than 100,000 young women were killed in fires in India in a single year, and many of those deaths were tied to domestic abuse, according to a new study published Monday.

Young Indian women are more than three times as likely to killed by fire as their male compatriots, according to an article published on the Web site of the British medical journal, The Lancet. The victims largely fell within a 15 to 34-year age group.

Domestic abuse is a serious problem in India. Women are sometimes killed in disputes over dowries; often in such disputes the victims are doused with gasoline and set ablaze, and their deaths are claimed as kitchen accidents.

In the first study of its kind and using the most recent data available, U.S.-based researchers analyzed death registrations, official questionnaires in rural areas and census figures to arrive at an estimate of 163,000 fire-related deaths in 2001, or 2 percent of all deaths. That number is six times higher than the number of such deaths reported by police. More than 106,000 of those, or 65 percent, were women."




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