Agencies
Ahmedabad, Jul 6: Police arrested the husband and in-laws of a woman who stripped and marched through the streets of Rajkot to protest dowry harassment, a news report said on Thursday.
Pooja Chauhan said she launched her unusual protest after being constantly harassed by her husband and his family for not providing enough dowry and for bearing a daughter, according to The Times Of India newspaper.
The incident took place in Rajkot, a key business city in Gujarat.
Violence and systematic discrimination against women are rampant in India. The dowry demands for a married woman could include a car, an apartment, consumer durables like a refrigerator or a television set or a two-wheeler scooter, apart from gold jewellery and money.
Shocked local residents saw Pooja Chauhan, in her undergarments and carrying a baseball bat and bangles in her hands, marching to the police commissioner's office on Tuesday.
Police immediately arrested her husband Pratapsinh Chauhan and his parents. ''The arrests were made on the basis of Pooja Chauhan's complaint," the daily quoted Police Commissioner K Nityanandam as saying.
Indian society has long favoured boys, who do not require the enormous dowry payments that bankrupt many poor families when Indian girls marry.
The newspaper said Pooja married Chauhan three years ago and her in-laws kept demanding more dowry. The harassment increased when she gave birth to a daughter eight months ago.
She left home five months ago and started living on her own with her daughter, it said.
The twenty two-year-old Pooja Chauhan, said it was the insensitivity of the police that drove her to take the step.
"Time and again I would go to the police and they would tell me they were looking into my complaint. But they were not taking any action," Pooja said.
After the woman took the extreme measure, police finally registered an FIR and arrested her husband, mother-in-law and two other relatives for allegedly torturing her for dowry.