Human rights organizations generally operate freely, but face harassment in rural areas from landlords and other powerful interests. Each year, dowry disputes cause several thousand women to be burned to death, driven to suicide, or otherwise killed, and countless others to be harassed, beaten, or deserted by husbands. Although dowry is illegal, convictions in dowry deaths are rare. Rape and other violence against women continued to be serious problems. Many of the hundreds of thousands of women and children in Indian brothels are held in debt servitude and subjected to rape, beatings, and other torture in a system that thrives with the complicity of local officials.
Muslim women face discrimination in inheritance rights.
Tribal land systems, particularly in Bihar, often deny tribal women the right to own land. The constitution bars discrimination based on caste, but in practice members of so-called scheduled castes and scheduled tribes, as well as religious and ethnic minorities, routinely face unofficial discrimination. Caste-related violence kills scores of people each year. Freedom of religion is respected. However, in January 1999, the Delhi-based United Christian Forum for Human Rights reported that Hindu militants had carried out at least 114 assaults on Christians in the past year, including rape, assault, the burning of churches, and destruction of Bibles.