New Delhi: The deaths of Deepika Nagar and Twisha Sharma, both within days of each other in May 2026, have brought dowry-related domestic violence to the centre of public attention.Deepika Nagar, 24, succumbed to multiple trauma injuries and internal bleeding, seventeen months after her wedding, with her family alleging sustained harassment linked to demands for money and a luxury vehicle. Twisha Sharma, 33, died by suicide five months after her wedding. Police have registered cases of dowry harassment and abetment of suicide, while her husband is reported to be absconding.A Delhi Police SWAT commando died in January 2026, after allegedly being assaulted by her husband for dowry. Another 28-year-old woman was killed by her in-laws in August 2025, after demands for an additional Rs 36 lakh despite earlier dowry payments.While the cases are recent, drawing renewed attention, pervasive dowry-linked domestic violence is not. The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data from 2024 highlights a persisting pattern of dowry-related harassment, prevalent well before the cases made headlines.What the numbers showAccording to data released by NCRB, India recorded 5,737 dowry deaths in 2024, a number that translates to nearly 16 women losing their lives every day in circumstances related to dowry harassment, domestic violence or suspicious deaths after marriage.Uttar Pradesh accounted for more than a third of the national total, with 2,038 cases reported in 2024, followed by Bihar with 1,078 deaths. The two states make up over half of India’s dowry-related deaths. Madhya Pradesh (450 deaths), Rajasthan (386 deaths) and West Bengal (337 deaths) are among states with the highest number of such cases. Uttarakhand noted the highest dowry crime rate in 2024 at 9.8 cases per lakh women.Delhi registered 109 such cases, leading to 111 deaths, with a rate of 1.4 cases per lakh women – the highest among metropolitan cities. Kanpur recorded 54 cases. Cases registered under the Dowry Prohibition Act also remained high. 12,343 cases were filed in 2024, lower than the 15,489 reported in 2023, yet alarmingly high.Gender as a major fault lineThe NCRB’s “Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India 2024” report states 1,70,746 deaths by suicide were recorded nationally in 2024, marginally declining from 1,71,418 cases in 2023. The data reveals that economic vulnerability and gender have been the two main fault lines consistent across years.Although daily wage earners constituted the largest occupational group recorded in the data, with 52,910 deaths by suicide (31% of the total figure), homemakers formed the second-largest group, with 22,113 deaths. Among female victims of death by suicide specifically, homemakers represented the highest occupational category by a wide margin.Despite a skewed overall male-to-female ratio of 73.5:26.5 in cases of death by suicide, within particular causes, such as dowry-related issues, physical abuse and infertility, victims were disproportionately female. Of the 1,693 cases of death by suicide attributed to dowry-related issues in 2024 in the dataset, 1,360 victims or nearly 80% were female.Within the category of family problems leading to deaths by suicide, marriage-related issues accounted for 8,524 cases, of which dowry-linked issues comprised 1,693 cases.Dowry crimes likely to be underreportedWhile the datasets indicate a decline in recorded deaths related to dowry harassment over the years, research shows that dowry crimes in India are often underreported. A 2025 paper, by Rambooshan Tiwari and Shubham Narayan Dixit, titled “A Spatio-temporal Analysis of Dowry Crimes in India,” argues that the gap between dowry cases and deaths occurs “when a death is reported, but not the practice of dowry.” While speaking to IndiaSpend, Tiwari noted that dowry-linked cases are more likely to be reported only after the termination of the marriage.The problem of underreporting dowry-harassment is well-documented. A 2015 paper published in the Journal of Biosocial Science, found that figures recording dowry-related issues are likely to be an underestimate as crimes against women often go unreported due to social stigma and norms. Another article in Trauma, Violence and Abuse said the “difficulty in accurately identifying and naming suspicious deaths caused by burning, drowning or poisoning as dowry deaths” further exacerbates this issue and obscures the true count.Indulekha Guha, assistant professor at Azim Premji University and a researcher on crimes against women, pointed to a statistical distortion within the NCRB’s methodology: the “principal offence rule,” which means that only the “most heinous” crime of all offences mentioned in a first information report (FIR) is recorded. As a result, dowry offences are often subsumed under murder investigations and may disappear from under the dowry death tally altogether. According to NewsLaundry, Guha suggested that NCRB figures should be cross-verified with judicial data published at district and sessions courts level to understand the true extent of dowry crimes. However, Guha added that crimes of lesser intensity are more likely to go underreported, as a police officer at the local level may not be as familiar with the principles of the Dowry Prohibition Act than with more clear-cut categories such as dowry death.IndiaSpend, in January 2017, reported that several serious injuries, like burns or harm inflicted by partners, in-laws or the victim herself, are classified as accidents. A study examined 22 cases of burn injuries among women, 15 of which were reported as accidents. It found that only three of the cases were accidents, while the remainder were either self-inflicted or caused by others. It also revealed that 19 of the 22 victims were experiencing domestic abuse at the time.