She was kept under control of her in-laws

By Michelle Mandel, Toronto Star

Amandeep Kaur Dhillon had won the lottery for them all -- or so her Indian family believed as they wed her to an Indo-Canadian man she'd met only three days before.

As they sang and celebrated as they delivered their frightened-looking daughter to a veritable stranger they knew little about, they hoped that she would save them from their difficult life in the Punjab and one day bring them all to the promised land of Canada as well.

But what a deal with the devil it would prove to be. Amandeep was used by both sides in this barbaric bargain, a sacrificial lamb who lived a life of misery in Mississauga -- separated from her child, isolated from the world -- until the 22-year-old was finally found murdered New Year's Day in what may have been a "dowry death," her father-in-law now charged with the crime.

On Nov. 11, 2005, she was attired in her beautifully embroidered scarlet wedding suit, a sparkling tikka on her head, multicoloured bangles on each wrist as she was married to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the suitor her parents had arranged for her at a lavish wedding they could ill afford.

Yesterday, just over three years later, her battered body was dressed the same way for her funeral.

This was not the Canadian dream she deserved.

But she was always a pawn, it seems, in a financial arrangement. Relatives say that the Dhillon family had gone home to the Punjab to find a husband for their daughter. While speaking to the banquet manager, they learned there was also a good family who could provide a fine match for their son Gurinder.

Amandeep, of course, had no say in the matter. "In our culture," explains her maternal aunt, Beant Kaur Benipal, 45, "we're happy with whatever our parents tell us to do."

A deal was done. Dowries have been outlawed in India since 1961, but the prohibition is rarely enforced. For Amandeep's chance at a better life, her aunt says her parents agreed to pay the groom's family their requested dowry of more than $60,000 and then spent another $12,000 toward the extravagant nuptials they expected, borrowing millions of rupees against their farmlands to scrape together the money.

It would be an investment in a nightmare.

Through a Punjabi translator, her aunt says that throughout her brief, unhappy marriage, Amandeep and her family were continually pressured to come up with even more money if they expected to be sponsored to Canada. Even after the wedding, she says Amandeep was told her immigration papers would be filed only if her parents gave them another 100,000 rupees, or $2,500, which they did.

Then the groom's family wanted still more money, Benipal says, before Amandeep would be "allowed" to sponsor her family here.

Her niece was even prevented from attending her cousin's wedding back home because her parents hadn't come up with more cash. "They said she couldn't go back to India until her family paid $2 million more in rupees."

Conflicts over dowries are such a serious problem in India that the crime of "dowry death" was created in 1986 just to deal with the suspicious deaths of women within the first seven years of their marriage. Newly married brides are often subjected to vicious demands from their husbands and in-laws for additional money or gifts after the wedding and the abuse becomes so intolerable that some women choose suicide while others are eventually murdered for not complying with their new family's demands.

According to India's National Crime Bureau, an estimated 6,000 to 7,000 women die annually in dowry deaths. Few of the perpetrators are ever brought to justice, and the grooms' families go on to secure new dowries as the sons marry again.

"One of the most worrying aspects of this problem," writes University of London lecturer Werner Menski in South Asians and the Dowry Problem, "has been that such murders and other dowry-related violence have been on the increase and now occur no longer only in Delhi or somewhere far away in South Asia, but also in London, other British cities and in the urban centres of North America."

Canada would offer no sanctuary for her. Amandeep's new life here was "torture," her aunt says. When she arrived in Peel in 2007 to live with her husband and father-in-law, Benipal says she was never allowed to leave their house unescorted and when she called home to India, someone would always be listening on the other extension.

The only joy in her life was her little boy, Manmohan, born on March 1, 2007. But even that happiness was stolen from her. According to her aunt, when the baby was just 10 months old, Amandeep's mother-in-law, who still lived in Indian then, insisted that he be sent to her. When she no longer wanted to care for him, she passed him over to his maternal grandparents.

"Amandeep wanted him back but his family overruled her," her aunt says from her home in the Punjab. "They wanted her parents to raise him through the difficult years and then they would send for him."

In the shadows of a modern city, what a tragically cruel life Amandeep was forced to lead in silence -- separated from her baby, isolated from others in a strange country, trapped in an unhappy marriage. Yet her family knew little of it until after the Dhillons bought the Airport Foods grocery store and Amandeep could finally steal some free moments alone every week to call India and tell her aunt of her increasing desperation.

It seemed nothing she did was good enough -- even breaking a glass would mean a phone call to India to complain about her to her mother-in-law. The verbal insults were constant, the pressure for more money was relentless and, her aunt charges, Amandeep was beaten on at least three occasions.

'CRYING ALL THE TIME'

"She was crying all the time on the phone that she was being abused," Benipal says, adding that conditions for her only grew worse after her mother-in-law recently moved in.

Yet the poor young woman saw no way out -- she feared her baby would never be returned to her if she complained and she knew the hopes of her own family rested on her beaten shoulders. "She was scared of telling the police because she said, 'My parents spent so much money and it would all go to waste if we got divorced.'

"She was sacrificing herself."

Even if Amandeep spared them the worst details, it seems her parents did little to help. They had invested so much in her being able to deliver them to Canada and in any case, their patriarchal society believes a married daughter is beholden to her husband's family, no matter what.

So she was told to persevere, to just wait until they joined her and things would be better. But Amandeep ran out of time.