Marriages are built on trust, commitment, and a partnership where both partners are considered equal. However, that is not always the case in reality. In some relationships, the balance is heavily skewed in favour of the husband.
36-year-old Santosh Atkar used to get into several fights with his wife Manisha. In December 2013, they had an argument where she refused to make tea for him and was about to leave the house. Provoked by this refusal, he assaulted her with a hammer and injured her head in front of their 6-year-old daughter. Instead of taking her to the hospital immediately, he first gave her a bath and then cleaned all the blood from the house.
On December 25, the woman succumbed to her injuries in the hospital and her maternal uncle filed a complaint against her husband. In July 2016, he was convicted under sections 304 (10-year rigorous imprisonment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 201 (2-year rigorous imprisonment for causing disappearance of evidence) of the Indian Penal Code, reports Hindustan Times.
From jail, he appealed in court for a reduction in his sentence saying that his late wife’s refusal to make tea was “sudden and grave provocation”. According to The Times of India, Justice Revati Mohite Dere of Bombay High Court ruled that his appeal had no merit and “is ludicrous, clearly untenable and unsustainable and as such deserves to be rejected.”
Justice Revati noted how he wasted precious time in destroying evidence as well as the trauma of the child whose statement was recorded 11-12 days after the incident. The court also made the following observations patriarchy:
- It would not be out of place to observe that a wife is not a chattel or an object. Marriage ideally is a partnership based on equality. More often than not, it is far from that. Cases such as these, are not uncommon. Such cases, reflect the imbalance of gender – skewed patriarchy, the socio-cultural milieu one has grown up in, which often seeps into a marital relationship.
- There is imbalance of gender roles, where wife as a homemaker is expected to do all the household chores. Emotional labour in a marriage is also expected to be done by the wife. Coupled with these imbalances in the equation, is the imbalance of expectation and subjugation. Social conditions of women also make them handover themselves to their spouses.
- This medieval notion of the wife being the property of the husband to do as he wishes, unfortunately, still persists in the majority mindset. Nothing but notions of patriarchy.
We hope that judgements and discussions like these bring about much-needed equality in marriages across the country.