Her family believed that she won a lottery for all of them as they wed her to an Indo-Canadian man she met merely three days before the marriage.
The family sang and celebrated while delivering their frightening looking daughter to a stranger, about whom they hardly knew anything. They felt that Amandeep Kaur Dhillon, the bride, will save them from their difficult life in Punjab and some day bring all of them to the wonderful, promising land of Canada.
But nothing near to what they thought happened and the only thing that happened was that Amandeep was used by both ‘parties’ in this barbaric bargain. She lived a life full of miseries in Mississauga- separated from her child, isolated from the world- until the 22-year old was found dead on the New Year’s day- a death which is possibly a “dowry death”.
On the 11th of November 2005, she was dressed in her beautifully embroidered scarlet wedding suit, with a sparkling tikka on her head and multicolored bangles on her wrists. At that moment, no one thought that after just three years, her battered body would be dressed the same way for her funeral.
At this point of time, it certainly seems to be a death caused due to dowry, with both sides to be blamed for the same. Back in India, dowry is a serious problem and has been banned. A University of London lecturer Werner Menski writes that one of the most worrying aspects of this problem has been that such murders and other violence related to dowry have been on an increase and now, is not just limited to Delhi or somewhere far away in South Asia, but it also happens in London, other British cities and in the urban centers of North America.