In 1979, Satya Rani Chadha's twenty year old daughter, Shashi Bala (also known as Kanchanbala), died of severe burn injuries while at home, a victim of
bride burning. She had been married less than a year and was six months pregnant at time of her death. Chadha could not afford to give the full dowry request to the family of her daughter's husband, which included demands for a scooter, a television, and a refrigerator. Still, Chadha managed to pay some money towards the television and gave a refrigerator. Even so, two days before her daughter's death, Chadha's son-in-law, Subhash Chandra, warned her of dire consequences if the demand for the rest of the dowry (the scooter) was not met. He denied involvement with the death, but suspecting her daughter was killed due to the partly unfulfilled dowry request, Chadha reported the death as murder. The police neglected to gather basic evidence and charged Chandra not with murder, but under the Dowry Prohibition Act. This led the Supreme Court to rule in 1980 that because Chandra's demands for a scooter came ten months after the marriage, it could not be connected to the death. Chadha continued to pursue a suit for murder, but it took until 2000 for the case to be heard in court. Chandra was eventually convicted of the lesser charge of abetting a suicide in 2000. On appeal his conviction was upheld in 2013, and was ordered to serve a seven-year sentence. He failed to hand himself in and has not served the sentence. ==References==