India: A 28-year-old man and his parents allegedly held his pregnant wife captive in a cowshed at their Noida home to pressure her family into meeting their demands for dowry, police said. The woman, who was tied up in the shed, was rescued by police.

Police have arrested the man’s parents and his brother under IPC Section 498A for subjecting the woman to cruelty in order to coerce her and her family to meet their dowry demands. Her husband is on the run.

‘We found her around 8 pm on Saturday. She was tied up in a cowshed on the property where she lived with her husband and in-laws, in Noida’s Chhalera village,’ said Anil Kumar Sahi, SHO, Noida Sector 39 police station, reports the Indian Express.

The woman was taken to Kailash Hospital where she was placed under observation in the ICU. V B Joshi, the hospital’s senior manager, said she was in a state of shock and depression when she was brought in, but is currently stable and conscious.

Police began searching for the woman, who is five months pregnant, after her father filed an FIR at Noida Sector 39 police station on June 1, stating that she had been missing from the previous night. In the complaint, he alleged that her in-laws had been harassing her for dowry for five months and had assaulted her.

‘They got married in December, 2017. The harassment began a month after that. The night before I filed the complaint, her father-in-law called me at 7 pm saying that my daughter and her husband were fighting and I should come and intervene. I said it was not possible for me to come at that point, but I spoke to her on the phone. Then at midnight, I got another call from him saying that she had been missing since 8 pm. I went out with some people to look for her in the area around their house but couldn’t find her,’ alleged the father.

He claimed the groom’s family was given Rs 15.5 lakh, a refrigerator and a washing machine at the time of the wedding.

‘Soon after, his family said they wanted more money to buy a Toyota Fortuner. We eventually gave them an additional Rs 20 lakh. Later, they returned the refrigerator and said they wanted a larger one. So we gave them a large double-door refrigerator,’ he alleged.