Dowry crusader Nisha Sharma honoured

India has a new heroine – a gutsy bride who said "no" to the dowry demands of her fiance and called off their wedding hours before the ceremony.

Nisha Sharma was supposed to marry last weekend. The Hindu priest and 2,000 guests had assembled for the lavish festivities when she called police and demanded they arrest the groom who spent what should have been his wedding night in jail.

"He wanted material things – not me," Sharma, a 21-year-old software engineering student, said, her hands and feet still painted with intricate henna designs, the traditional hallmark of an Indian bride.

Police booked the groom under the country's anti-dowry act – passed more than four decades ago to combat the ancient practice in which a groom's family demands cash, consumer goods and gold as part of a marriage settlement – but which is still widely flouted.

The family of the groom declined comment.

In a sign social attitudes may be changing, Sharma has become a celebrity for defying the age-old dowry tradition.

Her face has been splashed across newspapers and she has been flooded with proposals from men who say they would be honoured to marry her without a dowry.

A big Hindi daily, the Rashtriya Sahara, said in a salute: "Bravo: We're proud of you.

"My message to all girls is if they ask for dowry, don't give it and don't marry the man," she said in her living room surrounded by air conditioners, TV sets and other goods her family said had been demanded by her future in-laws.

"I want all girls to get inspiration from me saying 'no'."

New Delhi women's activist Rupa Chatterjee said Sharma had been very courageous.

"Until girls and parents take a stand like Nisha, people will not be scared and will flout the law," she said.

The government has tried to crack down on the dowry system but it still flourishes. Some families abort female foetuses or kill girls at birth fearing crippling dowry costs and sociologists say rising consumerism has made grooms' families greedier than in the past.

Some wives are even killed by their in-laws in dowry rows. Many die in infamous "stove burnings" in which in-laws set them ablaze and then claim it was a kitchen accident.

Sharma met the groom, a computer teacher, in March through a newspaper matrimonial ad, a common way for Indians to find partners under the system of arranged marriages. She said just before the wedding his family started making demands.

"I was surprised. The first day we met he said, 'we don't want anything'," she said.

The final straw came when her brother called her as she was getting ready to go to the wedding ceremony to say the groom's family and friends were insulting her businessman father and demanding more dowry.

Nisha registered a case with the police in Noida, a satellite town of Delhi, last Sunday after her husband to be, Munish Dalal, roughed up her father while demanding Rs1.2 million as dowry.

With the wedding on in full swing and all guests waiting moments before the marriage was to be solemnised, Nisha's father Devi Dutt Sharma pleaded with the in-laws. Nisha phoned the police.

Sharma, who owns three plastic factories in Noida, had already given Dalal Rs 600,000 and a luxury car. But the greedy groom, who had already asked for various household goods in twos, wanted more.

Nisha registered a case against Dalal, who was arrested from his west Delhi house on Monday along with his two sisters-in-law.

As for the household goods lying in packed cartons in the living room, Nisha's brother says they have not decided what to do with them yet.