4.1. The amendments recommended in the preceding Chapters of this Report touch the criminal law and its periphery. Once a dowry death takes place, there is certainly need for inserting provisions designed to facilitate investigation and prosecution, if the case contains a criminal element. But the pressing need is for effective measures which have, as their objective, preventing the recurrence in society of situations that lead to dowry deaths, whether such deaths are the result of suicide or of murder. Close reflection will reveal that dowry deaths occur because the woman’s relatives in the husband’s family make a persistent and determined demand for dowry. In the mind of the woman, this builds up tension of an acute character. The tension is built up step by step. Ultimately, a stage comes when the woman does not see any way out of the situation, excepting suicide. Returning to the parents’ home would hardly suggest itself to her as a permanent solution, though it is sometimes resorted to as a temporary expedient. Death becomes last refuge of the woman. Side by side with building up tension in the women’s mind, the situation occasionally develops into one where the greed for money,
