Woman and her baby daughter were burned alive by her husband and in-laws for dowry and a son.
A 25-year-old BTech graduate Pravartika Gupta and her baby daughter were allegedly burnt alive by her husband and in-laws at Delhi’s Sarojini Nagar area. In a country where 8,000 women are killed each year over dowry and rapes occur rampantly everyday, the case serves to further highlight India’s chilling attitude towards its women.
News reports indicated that the duo had been set on fire because of an issue over dowry, and also because the husband’s family had wanted the couple’s first child to be a son.
Pravartika succumbed to her injuries at Safdarjung hospital on Sunday.
The 13-month-old daughter, who suffered 55 % burns is in critical condition at the hospital, Hindustan Times reported.
The incident occurred on 6 October.
After Pravartika’s death, the Sarojini Nagar police, which had registered a case of harrassment against her husband and in-laws added section 304 B (dowry death) in the case and arrested her mother-in-law Sushma. Her husband is allegedly absconding.
Pravartika had married her husband Ashutosh about two years ago.
Ashutosh is a manager in an event management company in Gurgaon, while his father Ram Mohan Gupta is an assistant engineer with NDMC.
Don’t ever think women hating is an uneducated and poor people’s business. It is not. Female feticide, domestic violence, bride burning, dowry death are often occurred by the rich and educated living in posh urban areas. It is difficult for women to survive in a nasty misogynistic society. Women are getting killed everyday by their intimate partners whom they love and trust the most.
This is definitely not encouraging, and kind of does run counter to perceptions (my own included) that there are mostly problems of uneducated people. I mean, it may be more common but it doesn’t mean that being educated makes anyone immune to misogyny and violence.
I hazily recall, from various periods in my life, being exposed to ‘information’ that this was the sort of thing that didn’t happen, and to think that it did was racism/bigotry/xenophobia. But their existence is real, and the causes and methods are cultural – whether some of those cultural aspects are shared with other cultures (general sexism, male privilege) or not.
But I hadn’t imagined that this murder and abuse were as common as they apparently are. (Not that I find murder and abuse to be rare anywhere.)
I have a hard time grasping why people do think things like this, which are certainly influenced by prejudice, propaganda, and a weird sort of impetus to ‘just-so’ narrative. I mean to say, I sort of understand it, but I cannot really wrap my brain around it.
I’ve seen this happen where it wasn’t just an educated woman, but one who had never lived in India.
A friend of mine with whom I went to college and her husband via arranged marriage were British expatriates living in Canada. Because she wanted a career and refused to get pregnant immediately, he began to physically abuse her. Being educated and metropolitan, she didn’t put up with it and left him.
While the abuse she suffered was minimal compared to the mass murders of women going on, the point is the same. Partiarchal societies and religions put males first (I wouldn’t call them men) to the detriment of women. I can’t imagine how bad things will get in the future in India once the effects of selective abortion and gender disparity come into effect.
What always astounds me about this… is the fact that the father determines the gender. Do these people not know this? It’s HIS fault he had a daughter first, not his wife’s.
Not really true – it’s the set of chromosomes in the specific sperm cell, which a man has no conscious control over. It’s better to say that the sex of a baby is determined at random, with neither the mother nor the father having any say. If people don’t like that, they can blame the gods I suppose, just as long as they stop blaming their partner.
“Not really true”
It is as a counterpoint to blaming the woman for having a daughter. Sure, any marginally intelligent/ educated person knows a child’s gender is neither the father’s or mother’s “fault”, that they have no control over it (duh), but that’s not the kind of person we’re responding to when we’re having the conversation about who’s fault it is that the child is a girl.
There are many well known techniques to influence which sex your future offspring are and none of them involve selective abortion or any other intervention.
Every single one of these techniques is very near 50% effective. We live in an enlightened age.
I know what you’re getting at, but if you’re going to try to educate people out of one false belief, you might as well give them the truth, rather than another false belief.
If only it was so simple as giving people correct facts. You don’t think such stupidity would have been eradicated long ago? These wrong-headed beliefs are surprisingly impervious to reason. See Akin’s, “If it is a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try and shut that whole thing down.”
Besides, “the father determines the gender” is not a “false belief”.
Intelligence and education are no bulwark against belief, on the contrary. Educated, intelligent people are simply better at finding rationalisations for their actions.
Humans are born with the ability to assimilate the culture they grow up in, and if this culture is misogynistic, a vast majority of its members (men and women) will grow up to be misogynists. And find reasons why their culture, no matter the atrocities committed in its name, is the best.
Female “feticide”? Might be better stated as “violence against a pregnant woman because she is carrying a female fetus”. The distinction between the fetus and the PERSON who is the actual target of the violence is important.
Taslima, I have had it pointed out to me that often the pregnant woman herself chooses to abort the female fetus. This is a true consequence of women being taught that their femaleness makes them less desirable as humans, and it escaped me in the context of violence by men against women. Thanks for accepting my comment, and please accept my apology for the attempted “correction”.
I am a pro-choice person, I should not have used the term ‘feticide’. But women have been suffering because of the consequences of ‘sex selective abortion’. Sex ratio is skewed. Women are now victims of bride trading.
Puerto Rican woman kills man after Facebook fight – Home » Other Sections » Breaking News
SAN JUAN (AP) — Police in Puerto Rico say a 27-year-old woman is suspected of killing her boyfriend after he became upset about her activities on Facebook.
Lt. Candido Pagan says there were two children in the house when the killing occurred yesterday morning: a nearly 2-month-old girl and a 10-year-old boy. Pagan says both belonged to suspect Wilnilia Sanchez Falcon, but it’s unclear if they witnessed the killing in the central mountain town of Comerio.
Pagan says Sanchez is expected to be charged in the death of 25-year-old Jesus Rivera Algarin, who was stabbed in the torso. The lieutenant provided no information about what Sanchez may have posted on her Facebook account to upset Rivera.
He says Sanchez didn’t have a criminal history but Rivera was charged with domestic violence in 2010.
What a disgusting culture. India’s misogyny, plus its revolting caste system, makes it a country unworthy of the term ‘civilized.’
Misogyny sure is getting thrown around more and more these days. Clearly by all accounts this man has deep seeded psychological problems that go well beyond “misogyny”.
Do you people really think the men in a nation of a billion people are all mostly like this? Or even a small percentage are like this? Not that this guy seems like he needs anyone to stick up for him, but no one here knows the whole story. Reasons are given but in you act as if you were there in their house and are all knowing psychics.
If this story is even half true then this guy is a god damn psychopath. Psychopaths are everywhere, even India, even here, even everywhere. I’ve known a couple but not the violent types, both men and women.
To sit there and chalk this up to “mayognist” means that you truly are completely obsessed with it. This is a fucking murder case not a mysoginst. True he May hate women but I bet he hates everyone.
I think you people just love you read this kind of stuff so you can use it to mentally get more angry at your misplaced anger (new favorite word thanks Crom). I also think you are creating your own altered reality with all these “mysoginists” everywhere. I never thought about women and men and out differences my whole life until recrty. You crazy fuckers have made it an issue and now it’s a part of my life. Congratulations.
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