CHENNAI: More than two decades ago, a Maharashtrian woman died by suicide a little over four months after she was married. When you type a sentence like that out, it occurs to you how commonplace something like this is in the broader story of Indian womanhood.
Death by purported kitchen accident or death by suicide in the first few years after marriage is not particularly shocking in this context, although it should be, and if one does not linger on that sentence, it would simply be a single pixel in a larger picture.
When that particular woman died in 2002, however, her family of origin pressed charges. Her husband and in-laws were convicted in 2004 under Indian Penal Codes Sections 498A (cruelty inflicted on a woman by her husband or his relatives) and 306 (abetment to suicide). But this October, a single-judge Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court gave them an acquittal.
In the brief months of her marriage, some of the experiences that the deceased woman was subjected to included: being taunted for her cooking skills, being made to sleep on a carpet, not being permitted to do activities during which she may interact with other people on her own (such as leaving the house to throw garbage, visiting the temple or talking to neighbours) and not being allowed to watch TV. According to her in-laws, the suicide took place two months after her last visit to their village, Varangaon.
In the acquittal order, Justice Abhay S. Waghwase stated that “…none of the allegations has any severity or such nature of allegations would not constitute physical and mental cruelty as almost allegations are pertaining to domestic affairs of the house of accused. (sic)” The order also said that, “There is no evidence to show that at that relevant point or any proximity to the suicide, there was any demand, cruelty or mal-treatment so as to connect them with the suicidal death. What triggered the suicide has remained a mystery.”
What a trial court understood twenty years ago — that curtailing a person’s freedom in a hundred mundane ways adds up to cruelty, and that it is reasonable to connect that cruelty with a serious decline in mental well-being — has been reversed by a contemporary court. This isn’t only regressive. It is regression.
If that deceased woman had been in that situation today, she may have opted for a divorce. She may have done so with the support of her loved ones. Perhaps, but not necessarily. Such hopeful scenarios have become more acceptable in India in the time since her demise. But the amount of agency required to leave an abusive household, and the quantum of internal and material resources required to execute that successfully, are frequently underestimated.
There will be no justice for the deceased woman, and perhaps such a thing could only ever have been symbolic. Somewhere in this country — many somewheres — her situation is being replayed, still. For countless people, a legal precedent that dismisses quotidian, cumulative forms of harm presents a setback regarding how their plight will be considered by their families, by society and indeed in the eyes of the law.