BHOPAL: Come Dussehra and it would not just be the effigies of ten-headed demon king Ravan, which will be burnt in Indore to mark the victory of good over evil.
In a development, which might generate controversy in the coming days, an 11-headed giant-size effigy of Surpanakha (sister of Ravan) will be burnt this year in Indore on Dussehra by Paurush – a group working for the cause of men who are victims of wives’ abuse.
Each head of the giant effigy will have representative faces of women who are either accused or have already been convicted by courts for killing their better halves or children in various parts of the country.
In the centre of the 11 faces will be Indore’s Sonam Raghuvanshi, who along with alleged lover Raj Kushwah has recently been charge-sheeted by Meghalaya Police for plotting the May 23, 2025 honeymoon killing of her husband Raja Raghuvanshi.
The other ten faces will include Harsha Padiyar, who is accused of abetting photographer husband Nitin Padiyar’s alleged suicide in Indore in January 2025, and Hansa Patel of MP’s Dewas district who was allegedly involved in the murder of husband Pravin Patel.
The effigy will further have faces of Muskan Rastogi, who is accused of murdering her husband with her lover’s help in UP’s Meerut in March 2025, and Ravita Kashyap, who with her lover’s help allegedly strangled husband Amit Kashyap to death in the same western UP district in April 2025.
The other faces include Shashi Devi (Firozabad, UP) who is accused of poisoning her husband to death with her lover’s help in July 2025, Nikita Singhania (Jaunpur, UP) who is accused of abetting AI engineer husband Atul Subhash’s suicide in Bengaluru in December 2024, Sushmita Dev (Delhi) who allegedly murdered husband Karan Dev with her lover’s help in July 2025, and Gudiya Devi who allegedly murdered husband Vijay Chauhan in Mumbai in July 2025.
Two women who are accused of killing their children too will have their representative faces on the heads of the Surpanakha effigy, including Suchna Seth who allegedly killed her four-year-old son in Goa and transported the body in her luggage, and Priyanka Savita, a widow convicted in July this year by a court in central UP’s Auraiya district for mercilessly killing her three children in June 2024.
Surpanakha’s effigy will reportedly be paraded through the city in a procession before being burnt at Indore’s Mahalaxmi Nagar Mela Ground at 6.30 pm on Dussehra.
Already banners and posters of this first-of-its-kind ‘Surpanakha Dahan’ event have been put up in some parts of Indore, and announcements inviting commoners to attend are being made.
“All that matters is the destruction of evil, irrespective of whether it’s male or female. The event is being organized with this theme in mind. Ravan symbolizes evil during his time, but in the modern world, such Surpanakhas also symbolize evil and destruction,” Paurush organization’s head Ashok Dashora said.