Till death do us part

The bad news arrived masked as a marriage proposal, one among the 200 others lying in Charu’s inbox. It had been a few months since the 23-year-old had, on the insistence of her parents, created a ‘profile’ for herself on an online matrimonial portal and waited for the perfect love story to unfold.

The one she decided to respond to, with the approval of her parents, was from 30-year-old Sarvpriye Singh, an MBBS doctor with a Delhi government dispensary. He seemed good-looking, financially comfortable and, like her, belonged to a scheduled caste. Having just cleared her Central Teachers’ Eligibility Test (CTET) after completing an MA in political science, Charu wanted to marry someone who would support her ambition for a teaching career. Her parents went over to meet Singh’s parents in Rohini. While Charu’s father worked at the post office in Delhi airport and owned a small home in west Delhi’s crowded Sagarpur, Singh’s father had retired as a department head at Safdarjung Hospital and owned two homes in Rohini and Ganesh Nagar. Singh’s parents openly bragged about their “superior social status” and declared the match uneven.

“His father kept saying, ‘My son is worth lakhs’,” recalls Charu’s 50-year-old mother, Tulsarani. The young couple had, however, fallen in love by then. By August, even as his family refused the match, Singh secretly married Charu in a no-frills Arya Samaj wedding and registered it the same day.

“When they came home to seek our blessings, I was angry, but felt that maybe they really loved each other and did it in a desperate attempt to be together. Sometimes the young can be foolish,” says Tulsarani, her tired eyes peering from behind her gold-rimmed glasses, seemingly searching for some answers to explain the tragedy that befell them soon after. Seated next to her at their tiny flat in Sagarpur, her husband, Satish, nods as he stares blankly at his lanky knees.

Following the secret wedding, Singh’s parents heaped insinuations on Tulsarani and Satish. “They seemed to believe we had conned their son into marrying our daughter. Finally, after their son put his foot down, they agreed to have a formal wedding and sent a mediator to discuss the terms of the dowry,” recalls Tulsarani. As the wedding date neared, the demands became unreasonable. The bride’s parents couldn’t afford to put up the groom’s relatives in posh hotels, or give as much gold or a car, as was demanded.

“I took a loan of ₹18 lakh to meet most of their demands. We bought 25 tolas [about 290g] of gold, gave ornaments for the boy, his mother, his sister and bought 80 pairs of clothes for his relatives. When they still pushed for a car, we stretched ourselves to offer a bike,” says Satish.

On December 1, the wedding day, the prospective father-in-law abused them and demanded nothing less than four wheels. “It was humiliating. One of us went to drop off the bike at their home because they wouldn’t touch it. We bowed our heads in shame as we watched our girl go away,” Tulsarani says.

The next six months were a blur of verbal abuse, humiliation and domestic violence. “He was too possessive and wouldn’t let her apply for a job or go anywhere,” says Aashu, Charu’s sister. At one point, Charu even gathered the courage to register a complaint with the Delhi Commission of Women (DCW), only to later withdraw it after her husband found out about it. Though Singh had also joined his family in taunting her for “bringing too little dowry”, at other times he appeared to support her, begging for time to allow things to settle down.

On the night of August 11, their fight turned particularly violent. “Mummy, they are going to kill me,” Charu had said over the phone. The in-laws threatened to get Singh married to another girl. When Charu’s parents asked her to return home, she refused to be cowed down or kicked out of her marriage.

The very next morning, she called to say she was feeling sick. Her husband had administered her an injection the previous night. Her parents begged her to come home in an auto, but by noon a neighbour called to say vaguely that Charu couldn’t leave as planned.

A flurry of frantic calls later, the parents finally found themselves in Ambedkar Hospital, staring at their daughter’s body in a sealed plastic bag.

“The post-mortem report suggests she hanged herself with a dupatta, but we cannot believe that. My daughter was a fighter and she wasn’t one to give up. She was killed. She went as a bride and came back a corpse,” says Tulsarani.

Singh has since been arrested and booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code — 498A (husband or his relative subjecting a woman to cruelty), 304B (dowry death) and 34 (criminal acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention). Tulsarani and Satish are waiting for the next court hearing this month, hoping and praying that Singh is unable to bail his way out of custody.

Reports of marital violence and cruelty against wives have surged in the Capital and other parts of the country. Ranging from crimes of passion to meticulously planned murders, the cases are keeping cops on their toes — there was, for instance, the 32-year-old man in Rohini accused of stabbing his wife to death for not “fasting for his wellbeing” on Karva chauth; the 22-year-old pregnant woman in Jahangirpuri who was allegedly murdered by her husband in July this year for not making perfectly round rotis; the 81-year-old Kochi man accused of clubbing to death his wife and son last April for using an air conditioner and running up the electricity bill; in February, a farmer in Madhya Pradesh who confessed to decapitated his wife after finding her with another man — he had walked with her head to the police station five miles away.

Are such violent marriages the new normal? Are women today readier to toss out the window their “till death do us part” vows? Is the great Indian family breaking apart?

The trap within

“Matrimonial issues are on the rise. In general, there is less patience and less compatibility in marriages today. Of the 500 women who approach our commission each day, 70 per cent come with matrimonial issues, almost all suffering domestic violence,” says the DCW chief Swati Maliwal, at her bustling office in Delhi’s IP Extension. There’s a queue of women outside the office with written complaints, in which they pour out their pain in the hope that the DCW will restore some normalcy to their lives.

Sona (name changed) is clad in a bright red salwar-kameez, which offsets her flawless complexion; her arms are covered in glittery red chudas all the way up to her elbows, and there’s more bright red in the sindoor smeared in her hair parting. Clutching a bunch of papers, she describes in her soft voice her arranged marriage to a small-time textile businessman six months ago. The beatings started within a month and she was once pushed down the stairs and kicked in the stomach until she vomited. “He says he doesn’t want to be with me any more,” says Sona. Asked what she wants from the DCW, she responds with, “Sunvayi. A hearing. I want him to tell me clearly what he wants. How can he leave me just like that?”

Maliwal says this is a mindset she encounters across socio-economic divides. “I once met a CEO facing domestic violence who, despite her husband’s infidelity, couldn’t leave him. She just felt he was ‘the one’... So, most women come with the mindset that it was just one thappad (slap) and that maybe he’ll want her back after a counselling session at the DCW. That mindset is the most difficult to counter,” says Maliwal.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), the number of crimes against women has increased steadily over the last few years. Cruelty by husband and relatives increased 14 per cent over the last five years, from 99,135 cases in 2011 to 113,403 cases in 2015. West Bengal, Rajasthan, Assam and Uttar Pradesh collectively account for half of all cruely cases. Interestingly, instances of dowry death fell nearly 10 per cent — from 8,618 in 2011 to 7,634 in 2015.

As many as 1,57,249 cases (33.3 per cent) related to crimes against women were pending for investigation at the end of 2015. The NCRB also notes that the conviction rate was a low 14.2 per cent for cases related to cruelty by husband or relatives. Across India, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Assam and Uttar Pradesh collectively account for half of all cruelty cases.

Violence claws through income divide

Deputy commissioner of police Esha Pandey, who heads the Special Police Unit for Women and Children (SPUWAC) at south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar, traces the root of violence to patriarchy, which additionally lauds it as a male virtue. “A man feels like a man only when he overpowers somebody. A woman provides a ready target,” she says.

The SPUWAC mostly deals with cases related to marital disputes and sexual violence. Pointing out that instances of violence in relationships have always existed, Pandey explains that what’s new is that more women are coming forward to report it. “They are ready to share the gory details of their relationships, to make sure the perpetrator is taken to task,” she says.

Her bureau is currently overseeing a case involving an Indian-origin woman raised in Australia. She had fallen in love with a highly- educated rich Indian man in that country; they married when she was just 19 and moved to live in India. “She came to us recently, after having endured abuse for 14 years,” says Pandey. “I realised that education really has nothing to do with domestic violence.” The woman gathered the guts to approach Pandey only because her children pushed her to do it.

Explaining that domestic violence cannot be tackled like any other law-and-order issue, Pandey says, “We can’t be present in their bedrooms [to enforce the law].” Malviya Nagar’s SPUWAC cell handled 234 domestic violence cases last year.

It is not easy to determine the exact trigger for such abuses, says Dr Amrit Kaur, a counsellor with SPUWAC. “One tends to assume that a man killed his wife because the roti wasn’t round. But those are just surface excuses. The reasons go deeper,” she says. These can range from dowry and other unrealistic expectations to modern-day pressures that require women to juggle work and wear many different hats, sexual problems, ego clashes, indebtedness and infidelity. “Mostly it is never sudden. The beginning is usually at the wedding itself, squabbling over belongings, property and flaunting superiority. The seeds of inferiority and anger are sown early,” she says.

Kaur recalls a case where the man expected his wife to retain her sex appeal, high heels and all, even when at home. Marriage and coming face-to-face with her ordinariness at home came as a rude shock to him.

“Of late, couples are walking in having already decided they want a divorce. There is less patience to make the marriage work,” says the counsellor with 35 years of experience.

Has SPUWAC taken upon itself the role of preserving the Indian family unit, given the steadily increasing divorce rates? “We don’t force anybody. If someone is not living happily with another, they should have the freedom to move away,” says Pandey. Where couples want to give their marriage another shot, they are offered counselling; and where they have decided to separate, SPUWAC helps them do it amicably. In all cases involving children, however, their interests assume top priority.

“I never want divorce to be seen as an option for a man to shirk his responsibility towards the wife or child. We ensure he firmly commits financial support,” says Pandey.

Shifting shapes of violence

The Haryana chapter of the All India Progressive Women’s Association (AIPWA) receives fresh complaints of dowry killings on a weekly basis, and honour crimes or harassment on a fortnightly basis from across the State.

Jagmati Sangwan, vice-president of the Haryana chapter, says aggression levels in crimes against women have spiked in recent times. In Kharkhoda town, a Jat girl married a Dalit boy four years ago and they had a child two years later. Last year, the girl’s family killed the boy and injured her so critically that she had to battle for her life in an ICU for days. A case was registered against her family under IPC sections pertaining to crimes against SC/ST (scheduled castes and scheduled tribes) and murder.

Those who defy caste divides are threatened for years and live under a cloak of fear, says Sangwan. And redress, where available, is often too late and too little. “Compensation for victims of honour killings comes after a six-month delay. They can’t be empowered to fight for justice with such delayed protection,” she says.

Countrywide the number of dowry crimes seems to be tapering, but in places like Sonepat, Faridabad and Gurgaon, two-third of all crimes against women are dowry-related, says Sangwan. When she met the then law minister DV Sadananda Gowda in July 2015, she sought his intervention to bring in a stronger anti-dowry law. “I have a fear that such a law will be hugely misused like the SC/ST Act,” she recalls him telling her. Ruing this mindset, she warns that it would “send a wrong signal to the police machinery, which is already disbelieving of a victim when she walks in to report abuse or harassment”.

She points to the judicial loopholes in the existing mechanism for reporting domestic violence. Some years ago, the Haryana government reduced the funding for legal aid services and a 24-hour helpline. Further, on July 27, the Central government introduced an amendment that stipulated that an accused in a case of dowry-related violence cannot be arrested straight away; instead, an FIR under section 498A can be lodged only after an investigation by district-level family welfare committees, followed by counselling for the victim. Until mid-October, there were practically no dowry-related FIRs lodged, according to Sangwan.

Thankfully, on October 13, the Supreme Court restored the requirement for immediate arrests for dowry-linked cruelty. While welcoming the development, Sangwan wants it to be set in stone. A recent circular from the director general of police of States instructs station heads to conduct their own investigations before filing FIRs. Sangwan points out that the investigation should take place after an FIR is filed, to rule out any scope for corruption and initiate procedures for immediate victim protection.

The absence of victim protection is a major drawback, says Maliwal. A woman who raises her voice against domestic violence is often thrown out of her marital home and finds that her own family often refuses to take her back. The interim application for relief and maintenance can take years to materialise, leaving her practically on the streets. “Each day I am asked this question: ‘Where do I go?’ The commission does not have an answer to this,” says Maliwal, who has recently set up a committee to recommend more immediate victim protection under the law against domestic violence.

Additionally, she wants the courts to reduce the pendancy rates for ongoing trials. “Even if there is misuse it should be checked with speedy trials. Take action against those misusing the law, rather than suspecting every complainant of lodging a false case,” she says.

Change is slow

Vaijayanthi Jadhav was in Std VIII when she started learning kickboxing. The skill gave her personality an added punch. Overnight she went from being a demure, bullied sibling to a flying samurai inside a rink. Years later, eight months into her pregnancy, when she was kicked in the womb by her husband, a car mechanic who regularly beat her, she didn’t fear. “Boxing had made my body strong and flexible. It could take anything,” recalls the 33-year-old.

After her baby girl was born she gathered the guts to separate from her husband and eke out a living as a single parent in Mumbai. Struggling to manage even one square meal a day, when she heard about the Maharashtra trials of a bodybuilding championship, she found herself thinking, ‘why not?’ Today, she is better-known as Natasha, an international-level bodybuilder, rippling with muscles that promise to reduce any troublemaker to pulp. If it wasn’t for the violence in her marriage, says Natasha, she might have never realised she could be this strong.

But for every such Natasha, there are hundreds others like eight-year-old Bolu’s mother, who lives in the shanties outside Nizamuddin railway station in New Delhi. When Bolu was rehabilitated by the NGO Chetna for drug abuse, he learnt how to call the police to report a crime. That spurred him to act against his own father, a rickshaw puller, who repeatedly beat his mother. The next time he saw his father saunter in drunk, strip his mother naked, and beat her to pulp, he dialled the local police and reported the abuse. The police promptly arrested his father. Bolu proudly walked into Chetna with a tale to tell. But the very next day, his father was back home. His mother had gone to the thana to demand his release.

“The cases that get reported in the NCRB and local police stations are only a fraction of the real numbers. Most women learn to live with abuse their whole lives,” says Sanjay Gupta, founder of Chetna.

Pauline Gomes, senior manager (curriculum and leadership development) of Breakthrough, an NGO that works against domestic violence, believes that the biggest change in recent years is that the culture of silence is being broken. “From the view that every man has the right to discipline his partner, people have slowly started acknowledging that it’s wrong,” says Gomes.

She points out that in recent years the term ‘domestic violence’ has expanded far beyond just physical violence to include verbal violence, psychological violence such as restricting mobility, and even economic violence such as depriving the wife the right to her earnings.

Kavita Krishnan, secretary of AIPWA, points that campaigns of the kind Save Indian Family Foundation spearhead weaken anti-harrassment laws by portraying them as anti-family. “The family today has become a template for nationalism. Breaking it somehow makes you anti-national. Our attempt should instead be to democratise our understanding of social and familial relationships.”

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