Here is a gruesome story from Jessore in Bangladesh (about 95 miles, 150 km, west of Dhaka), courtesy of The Independent:

A 20-yr-old woman, Joynur Khatun, fell victim to the wrath of her husband, Yunus Mollah, for allegedly not paying the requested dowry.

Yunus and Joynur were married in the village of Jagannathpur, at which point Yunus demanded that Joynur bring a dowry from her father, Yusuf Hossain, in the amount of 50,000 Takas ($770 US). Unable to meet the request of her husband, Joynur was then physically brutalized.

On August 3rd, Yunus began fighting with his wife over the dowry. What resulted was Joynur being beaten to the point of death. She died on the way to the health complex and her body was subsequently thrown in a pond. Yunus is now in hiding over the incident.

The dowry system seems to be an elusive concept for Westerners, as it is rarely properly explained. A good explanation can be found in this article by Mohammad Asghar. In it, he states the difference between the Muslim and Indian sub-continent system:

"Islamic law requires the Muslim bridegrooms to pay dowers to their would-be Muslim brides."

"[In the Indian sub-continent,] parents, irrespective of their religious affiliations, always want to get rid of their assumedly “un-saleable” daughters by offering dowers to their would-be sons-in-law."

Western-bias aside, if someone promises to pay you to take something and then doesn't pay you, you wouldn't be very happy. If the culture states that a dowry be paid, shouldn't it be honoured? I must point out that this by no means justifies murder, or any other sort of physical/verbal brutality. I also don't know the whole story, like was the dowry unreasonable, did the husband and father-in-law agree to a different price, etc. What I can tell you is that the dowry system remains a fascinating cultural aspect, which will probably be never full understood by the western world.