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NOIDA, INDIA, May 16, 2003: The musicians were playing, the 2,000 guests were dining, the Hindu priest was preparing the ceremony and the bride was dressed in red, her hands and feet festively painted with henna. Then, the bride’s family says, the groom’s family moved in for the kill. The dowry of two televisions, two home theater sets, two refrigerators, two air-conditioners and one car was too cheap. They wanted US$25,000 in rupees, now, under the wedding tent. As a free-for-all erupted between the two families, the bartered bride put her hennaed foot down. She reached for her royal blue cellphone and dialed 100. By calling the police, Nisha Sharma, a 21-year-old computer student, saw her potential groom land in jail and herself land in the national spotlight as India’s new overnight sensation. “Are they marrying with money, or marrying with me?” Ms. Sharma asked today, her dark eyes glaring under arched eyebrows. In the next room a fresh wave of reporters waited to interview her, sitting next to the unopened boxes of her wedding trousseau. Her father, a believer in arranged marriages, found the groom by placing a classified ad in two of Delhi’s elite English-language newspapers, a common practice here.



Today he recommended that fathers of brides check the bona fides of prospective in-laws. His potential son-in-law was not a computer engineer, he said, but a computer instructor. The mother was not a vice principal of a private school, but a gym teacher. That fact came home to him on Sunday night when Mrs. Dalal slapped him across the face for refusing her demand for cash. “The finger marks of her slap, later, after four hours, figured in my medical legal examination. Then Savitry Devi spit on my face,” he continued, referring to the groom’s aunt. “This was dowry cum blackmailing. I wanted to call police and dial my mobile, but it was snatched by somebody.” Instead, his daughter called the police.

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