On Friday evening, unable to cope with the loss, she allegedly set herself on fire.

Her family members were home — on ground floor of building number 77, Bharat Nagar, New Friends Colony — when two children in the neighbourhood spotted fire from the under-construction first floor. It was around 8.30 pm, said Susheel Kumar, who lives in the vicinity. “The children were incoherent; they just kept shouting ‘fire’,” Kumar said. “We assumed they must have seen a bonfire and approached the building casually.”

But, instead, they saw silhouette of a person on fire from below.

Three floors in the house are presently under construction, and the neighbours immediately alerted Beena’s family on ground floor. She was declared dead when taken to Safdarjung Hospital.

Outside their house on Saturday, Beena’s mother and brother Lile Ram betrayed a kaleidoscope of emotions: anger, frustration, helplessness, and utter gloom. For, it’s been a long battle for the family since they got her married to Rohini-based businessman Nitin Kumar in 2003.

Lile Ram said the trouble began with Kumar’s intermittent dowry demands, “something which we could not meet”. He said the family gave Kumar a house “but he sold that off. In 2005, he dropped her back home.”

Beena was pregnant by then. The following year, 2006, she gave birth to Khushi. But Kumar had by then filed for a divorce, still going on in a city court. Police officials said Beena’s family had filed a dowry harassment case in August 2007. “A case was registered against Nitin under Section 498A (husband or relative of husband of woman subjecting her to cruelty),” an officer from New Friends Colony Police Station said.

The divorce proceedings culminated in Thursday’s court order, granting child’s custody to Kumar, and, Beena’s family allege, her suicide the following day.

The family said they are renovating the building to build flats and let them out on rent. They run a grocery business otherwise. Beena’s father had died before her wedding.