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| Friday, 21 November 2003 |
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Wedding bells for anti-dowry heroine but new hurdles loom NEW DELHI, Thursday (AFP) A gutsy software student who sent her groom to prison for demanding dowry is set to marry but another suitor has urged a court to stop the wedding bells from ringing, officials said. Nisha Sharma who launched a campaign against greedy suitors after sending her groom to prison in May this year was not available for comments but the officials said she would have to appear in court on her wedding day. Her erstwhile suitor Navneet Rai has sought a stay on Sharma's marriage to New Delhi resident Ashwani Sharma, claiming the 21-year-old anti-dowry heroine who lives in the industrial city of Noida was legally wedded to him. "Sharma has already filed a case of fraud against this Rai because this is nothing but orchestrated harrasement," a close relative of the software engineering student who did not wished to be named told AFP. Sharma attained celebrity status when she scrapped her wedding at the last minute and called the police after her schoolteacher suitor, Manish Dalal, allegedly demanded 1.2 million rupees (25,000 US dollars) in dowry. Despite being banned by law in the 1980s as a non-bailable offence, it remains common for the family of the groom in India's male-dominated society to demand cash or goods or both before the matrimonial vows. Dalal was arrested under the Dowry Prevention Act and Sharma has vowed to pursue a judicial battle to punish the man who wanted to marry her only if she coughed up the cash as well as an expensive trousseau. Sharma has yet another hurdle to cross before matrimony as Dalal's lawyer, Rupesh Sharma Tuesday urged a court in Ghaziabad, a Delhi suburb, to restrain the fiesty woman from marrying, saying she was married to his imprisoned client. Following Sharma's footsteps three other New Delhi women sent their dowry-seeking grooms to prison this year. |
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