Here are links to some well written articles by Madhu Kishwar who is a woman but does not call herself a feminist, so we could trust her couldn’t we?
Destined to Fail: Inherent flaws in anti-dowry legislation
Destined to Fail: Inherent flaws in anti-dowry legislation – PDF format
Another article with similar theme but much more detailed:
Violence against Women: Good practices in combating and eliminating violence against women
In my above comment Sec-3 and Sec-4 of DP Act are wrongly interchanged. Accordingly, Sec 4 actually deals with ‘Penalty for Demand for Dowry’ and Sec 3 deals with ‘Penalty for taking or giving Dowry.Explanation remains intact.
Demand for Dowry explained
Sec-3 of DP Act,(Penalty for demanding dowry) is often resorted to by wife’s lawyers against the husband instead of Sec-4(Penalty for taking or giving dowry)for obvious reasons.One important derivation in respect of ‘Demand for Dowry’ is as under:
Dowry definition: ‘Property given or agreed to be given………………..’.Hence,
Demand for Dowry is: ‘Demand for Property given or agreed to be given………….’.
Now, ‘Demand for property given’ is meaningless as one cannot demand a particular property which is already given to him.Hence the only possible meaning of ‘Demand for Dowry’ is,’Demand for property agreed to be given’. In other words,the complainant must show an pre-existing agreement in support of his/her complain.Though the agreement may be verbal, in order that the verbal agreement makes any sense,it has to be supported through marriage negotiators, which is not at all easy. Hence such cases will always fail.