Dowry Laws in South Asia: How India Compares with Its Neighbours

Dowry is a South Asian institution, and every legal system in the region has had to decide what to do about it. Their answers fall into four models: prohibition, followed by India and Bangladesh; restriction by caps and lists, followed by Pakistan; reform of wedding customs, followed by Nepal; and accommodation of dowry as property within personal law, found historically in Sri Lanka. Comparing them clarifies the choices built into the Indian Act and the reforms debated around it.

Figure 1: Four models in the region

1. Bangladesh: prohibition, with a false case offence

• Bangladesh inherited the prohibitory model with its Dowry Prohibition Act, 1980, and replaced it with the Dowry Prohibition Act, 2018, passed in September 2018.
• The 2018 Act punishes demanding or giving dowry with imprisonment of one to five years, or a fine up to fifty thousand taka, or both.
• Its most debated feature is a separate offence of filing a false dowry case, punishable with up to five years or a fine up to fifty thousand taka, or both, a legislative answer to misuse that women's rights groups criticised as likely to deter genuine complainants.
• Dowry violence is dealt with under a special statute on repression of women and children, which carries the severest penalties, including capital punishment, for causing death for dowry.

Figure 2: India and Bangladesh compared

2. Pakistan: restriction by caps and lists

• Pakistan's Dowry and Bridal Gifts (Restriction) Act, 1976 does not prohibit dowry; it restricts it, a deliberately different model.
• The aggregate value of dowry and presents given to the bride by her parents is capped at five thousand rupees, bridal gifts and presents to the bridegroom are capped at the same figure, and wedding expenses of either party are limited to two thousand five hundred rupees.
• The parents of each party must furnish lists of the dowry, bridal gifts and presents to the Registrar, and offences under the Act are tried by the Family Court.
• The caps, set in 1976, have long since been overtaken by inflation and the Act is widely regarded as unenforced; the model shows how restriction can legitimise a practice it means to contain.
• Proposals to replace restriction with prohibition have been made, among them a 2025 private member's bill in the National Assembly for the Islamabad Capital Territory that would repeal the 1976 Act there and ban giving, taking and demanding dowry.

3. Nepal and Sri Lanka

• Nepal addressed dowry first through its Social Practices (Reform) Act of 1976, which regulates wedding customs and gifts; its National Penal Code of 2017 now punishes demanding dowry and harassing a woman over it, and its domestic violence law of 2009 reaches dowry related abuse. The approach treats dowry as part of a wider programme of social reform.
• Sri Lanka has no general dowry prohibition. Dowry has historically been recognised as property within certain personal law systems, where property given to a daughter on marriage forms part of her separate estate, and the debate there concerns its status and protection rather than its criminalisation.
• Both illustrate that the Indian prohibitory model is one choice among several, each reflecting how a society frames dowry: as a crime, a custom to be moderated, or a form of the daughter's property.

4. What the comparison teaches

Figure 3: Four lessons from the region

• Restriction does not work better than prohibition: Pakistan's caps, outdated and unenforced, show that regulating dowry concedes its legitimacy without controlling it.
• Records are the common weakness: both India's lists and Pakistan's registrar lists depend on parties documenting what they would prefer to hide.
• Answering misuse by penalising false cases carries a cost: Bangladesh's offence addresses a real concern but risks silencing genuine victims, a trade-off India has so far avoided by acting on arrest and process instead.
• Structure decides most: in every system the strength of dowry tracks inheritance and marriage markets, which is why India's equal coparcenary rights for daughters are part of the reform story.

5. Quick Revision

1. Prohibition, restriction, reform and custom are the four models.
2. Bangladesh answered misuse with a false case offence; India with arrest safeguards.
3. Pakistan's caps show the limits of regulation.
4. Documentation is the shared weak point.
5. Inheritance shapes dowry more than penal text.

6. Frequently Asked Questions

Would India do better with Pakistan's restriction model?

The comparison suggests not. Restriction concedes that dowry is legitimate within limits and then relies on value caps and lists to keep it within them. Pakistan's caps were set in 1976 and have been overtaken by inflation, and the lists to the Registrar are widely regarded as unenforced, so in practice the model regulates nothing while signalling acceptance. India's prohibition at least makes the transaction unlawful and gives the woman legal tools, including the section 6 trust over anything received. Where the restriction model has an idea worth borrowing, it is in the registration of lists with an official, which is precisely the documentation reform debated in India; but that can be pursued within prohibition, without abandoning the norm the Indian Act establishes.

Should India copy Bangladesh's offence of filing a false dowry case?

The proposal surfaces in Indian debates, and the comparison helps evaluate it. A specific false case offence answers the misuse concern directly, but it carries a predictable cost: women considering a complaint, already facing family pressure and the giver's own liability, would also face a risk of prosecution if their case fails, and acquittal is not the same as falsity. Women's groups in Bangladesh made exactly this criticism of the 2018 Act. India already has general provisions punishing false charges and false evidence, and has addressed misuse through process, arrest safeguards, particularity requirements and quashing, rather than through a new offence aimed at complainants. A balanced answer notes the concern, the chilling risk, and the existing general remedies.

What does Sri Lanka's approach show about dowry as property?

It shows the other face of the institution the Indian law also recognises. Where dowry is treated as property given to a daughter on marriage, forming part of her separate estate, the legal question is not whether to punish it but how to protect her ownership against husband and in laws, the same question the Indian law answers through stridhan and the section 6 trust. The Indian Act combines both perspectives: it prohibits the transaction and, where the transaction has nonetheless occurred, routes the property to the woman. The comparison clarifies why that double structure exists and why examiners treat the line between dowry and stridhan as central to the field.

Do the regional systems agree on punishing dowry violence?

Broadly yes, whatever their approach to the transaction. India punishes dowry death with seven years to life and a mandatory presumption, and cruelty connected with dowry demands as a separate offence; Bangladesh deals with dowry violence through a special statute carrying its severest penalties; Pakistan, though it restricts rather than prohibits dowry, punishes violence against women under its general criminal law. The divergence lies in the transaction itself, prohibited, capped or left to custom, not in the condemnation of violence connected with it. That convergence supports the view that the penal response to dowry violence is the least contested part of the field, while the treatment of the payment remains a genuine policy choice, the choice on which the four regional models divide and on which the Indian reform debate continues to turn, in proposals ranging from records to inheritance.

7. Related Topics and Provisions

• Dowry in India: social history and the road to legislation
• Dowry and stridhan distinguished
• The presents exception and the Lists of Presents Rules
• The misuse debate and the compoundability question
• Six decades of the Act: enforcement and effectiveness
• The reform agenda: proposals and the road ahead