New Delhi: “He would often touch me inappropriately, tear my clothes and insert his hands inside my clothes,” Simran, 32, (name changed) said, recalling the one and half years of abuse inflicted by her father. Her father is now dead. Simran has been accused of killing him almost a decade ago.
What happens when such a victim retaliates?
The law on accepting ‘battered women syndrome’ (BWS) as a legal defence in India is still at a nascent stage — with courts not sure of whether to call such women criminals or victims. According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, crime against women rose by 15.3 per cent to 4,28,278 cases in 2021, from the previous year.
The National Family Health Survey (NFHS) data shows “sexual violence is most often committed by individuals with whom women have an intimate relationship”. Among married women, 82 per cent reported husband and 14 per cent named ex-husbands as perpetrators of sexual violence. Among the unmarried, the most common perpetrators — 39 per cent — were ‘other’ relatives. Father or step-father was mentioned by 4 per cent respondents.
Simran’s mother died in 2010. Her two elder sisters were married and Simran, the youngest, used to stay with their father in a Delhi locality.
She claimed that her mother’s death triggered a series of incidents that changed her life. She alleged her father often abused her sexually and no amount of resistance worked. “I had so much anger filled inside me,” she told ThePrint.
As per the prosecution, Simran’s father was killed with a cable wire, glass pieces and a cricket stump. She spent four years in Tihar jail, before she was granted bail in 2018. Her case is being heard by a Delhi court.
Meanwhile, courts are slowly reading the syndrome into the existing defence of provocation, and have also come up with their own version of the BWS, called ‘Nallathangal syndrome’. However, experts stress the need for more clarity on the subject from law and the courts, as well as the need to address the more systemic challenges related to domestic violence that actually push women to either kill themselves or abusers.
Why don’t women just leave?
“I know I am flawed, but my love is not. Why would I abuse you if I didn’t love you? Why would you take it if you didn’t love me?” Vijay Varma’s character Hamza asks Alia Bhatt’s character Badru in Netflix’s Darlings, when she tries to file a police complaint. Hamza, an alcoholic, physically abuses Badru at nights. In the mornings, he is remorseful, charming, and full of affection.
The psychological theory of battered women syndrome also finds root in this cycle of abuse. This theory explains three distinct phases — a tension building phase with verbal fights, a violent phase, and a honeymoon stage during which the abuser is apologetic and even affectionate towards the victim.
It also answers the question why women choose to kill abusive partners instead of simply leaving them. The theory says that the cycle of violence often leads to ‘learned helplessness’, in which women believe they are in a hopeless situation over which they have no control and consider the death of the abuser as the only way out.
Barkha Bajaj, founder director of Aks Foundation who specialises in trauma, gender-based issues and grief work, explained that BWS is actually a response to acute and long-term exposure to trauma.
“At the core of any abusive relationship is power and control, and this can happen in any dynamic,” she said. When a person lives in a situation of domestic violence or abuse or any other kind of trauma for years, “their body goes into a freeze response and collapses”.
“That is the body’s way of coping with what is happening. So dissociation, depersonalisation, derealisation — these are all the things that can happen to someone suffering from domestic violence. I think people imagine things are just very healthy and that they have a lot of agency and that they can just walk out. It’s not like that,” she told ThePrint.
“Abuse in abusive relationships is very similar to what prisoners of war go through, making it impossible to leave. There’s often a good cop and a bad cop in the same person. I’ve seen perpetrators who will hit you, take you to the hospital, nurse you back to health, apologise. But the abuse is repeated after that. So it’s very confusing for the victim too,” she added.
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‘Sinner or a victim?’
22 January, 2006, was a usual day for Manju, who lived in the labour quarters of Assam’s Gahpur Tea Estate with her husband Bhadra Lakra and their children.
Everything changed when Bhadra returned home drunk in the night and beat Manju with a laathi, as he would often do. However, that day, Manju snatched the laathi and repeatedly struck Bhadra with it. He died of his injuries in the early hours of next day.
The high court described Manju as “one of those Indian housewives, who confront and suffer, day in and day out, unprovoked acts of domestic violence”. It then asked “whether her act was sinful or was she just a victim of the circumstances?”
While the trial court convicted Manju for murder and sentenced her to life imprisonment, the Gauhati High Court held her guilty for culpable homicide under Section 304 (Part II) of Indian Penal Code (IPC) for culpable homicide instead. It also reduced her jail term to 5-year rigorous imprisonment.
In India, Section 300 of IPC defines murder and lists down five exceptions — including grave and sudden provocation, and private defence — which lay down the situations in which a culpable homicide is not classified as a murder.
Unlike death or life imprisonment for a murder, the punishment for culpable homicide is divided into two parts under Section 304.
Part I says that if the accused causes bodily injury to the victim with intention to cause death, or with intention to cause such bodily injury as is likely to cause death, then punishment will be life imprisonment or a maximum of 10-year jail. Part II comes into play when death is caused by doing an act with knowledge that it is likely to cause death. This is punishable with a maximum of 10-year jail.
Therefore, culpable homicide not amounting to murder is usually considered a lesser offence as compared to murder.
While convicting Manju for a lesser offence, the HC opined that she actually just wanted to put an end to the continuing violence of her husband, and so, “she felt that nothing short of putting an end to the life of her husband would be a solution”. It, therefore, felt her continued violence would fall under the exception of “grave and sudden provocation”.
Nallathangal’s ballad
Regarding trauma responses, Bajaj explained such abusive situations are like “pressure cookers”. “Sometimes the pressure will build up to a point where either I can harm myself, or I can take it out on the abuser.”
Several judgments have dealt with cases in which women took the second recourse. In such cases, the ‘Nallathangal syndrome’ is often considered as the Indian version of the BWS.
In 1989, the Madras High Court came up with the syndrome, referring to the ‘Nallathangal ballad’ in Tamil which, it said, narrates “the tribulations of a rich lady reduced to an unbearable misery and who committed suicide along with her seven children”.
The accused, Suyambukkani from Nammalwarpet, got married at 19 to a barber in the neighbouring village of Villivakkam in Chennai. The description of their marriage narrated by the high court was of physical, emotional and financial abuse by her ‘alcoholic’ husband. Suyambukkani alleged that her husband would beat her often. He even “ordered” not to meet her mother or brother, and barred them from coming to their house.
She alleged that in June 1983, her husband beat her in the morning on 26 June after an argument, then again in the evening, and in the morning on 27 June. She was determined to not let it happen again. On 28 June, she was found, along with her two infant sons aged 2 years and 10 months, in a well in the neighbourhood. Her sons had died.
The trial court convicted her for double murder in March 1984. However, the high court narrated the build up to Suyambukkani’s actions, to explain how she “decided to follow the Nallathangal’s way”. It then quashed her conviction for murder, and held her guilty under Section 304 part I instead. It also reduced her sentence from life imprisonment to the jail term already undergone by her, setting her free.
Provoked
The BWS concept sprung into the public eye with the Kiranjit Ahluwalia case, which also formed the basis of the film Provoked. Ahluwalia’s case led to UK and US psychiatrists establishing the diagnosis of battered woman’s syndrome. Canadian courts have also recognised the defence, and accept expert testimony for jurors to understand and determine the actions of such women.
Provocation is one of the most commonly-used defences by an abuse victim in a murder case. Under the existing law, “grave and sudden provocation” is an exception under Section 300 of IPC, which can reduce the offence from murder to culpable homicide. Over the years, grave and sudden provocation was ruled to include ‘sustained provocation’, holding that even a series of acts over a period of time could cause grave and sudden provocation.
In the Madras HC judgment, the court opined that Suyambukkani’s act would fall within the exception of sustained provocation.
In another 2014 order, the Madras HC granted anticipatory bail to Amutha who was charged with killing her daughters after a failed suicide attempt. Recognising “battered women syndrome” expressly, it said Amutha killed her daughters due to “sustained provocation”.
However, experts have explained that even in cases of sustained provocation, there should be no lapse of time between the offense and the last provocation.
As against provocation, which is a partial defence, private defence is completely justifiable and can lead to acquittal, not just a reduction in sentence. However, it has never been successfully deployed in India in a case of an abuse victim being compelled to kill.
SC lawyer Mrinal Kanwar explained that on the face of it, the defence of BWS does not seem to fit into any of the existing defences available under the criminal law.
She explained, “The exception of self defence can be used only when reasonable apprehension of danger persists, which would not always be applicable in these cases, because this would require the battered woman to have the reasonable apprehension that the batterer would immediately hurt her, which is not always the case.” She also pointed out that for self defence to apply, the defender has to react proportional to the threat, and this may not work in case of a battered woman.
As for the defence of grave and sudden provocation, she asserted that “it is available to the battered woman only when she has been deprived of the power of self-control due to grave and sudden provocation by the batterer,” and added, “This also doesn’t take into account the fact that most BWS killings are due to sustained provocation and not sudden provocation.”
The BWS defence has also faced criticism for being outdated, and for shifting the focus from a woman’s objective rationality for preserving her life, to being pigeon-holed into ‘bad or partially mad’.
‘He is free now’
Meanwhile, scholars demand addressing the more systemic issues accompanying domestic violence, pointing out that it is a “deeply socially ingrained phenomenon, and battered women are trapped in violent relationships due to failed institutional responses.”
Bajaj said victims often face several impediments while trying to leave an abusive relationship. She explained these include hurdles which begin from the difficulty in reporting the crime and police insensitivity, to lack of shelter homes, societal and familial support, and the cases dragging on for years.
“It’s the same story again and again. We are failing them, failing our victims completely, and then expecting them to have the agency on their own to fight it.”
Bajaj recalled that she had to move a survivor from one end of Pune to another end, because her husband would find her in any basti (slum) she was relocated to. In response to the woman filing a case, he put chilli powder in her vagina.
“He did that as a punishment. He was angry, ‘how dare she go to the police’. We had to move her 20 km away,” she said. “So it’s not like the perpetrator makes it easy for the victim to leave…Research shows violence will escalate highest when a woman tries to leave. So the risk of trying to leave is also very high, because violence can actually go up.”
Simran says she did try to escape her father. She claims to have gone to a gurdwara at least twice, but did not know where to go from there. She also confided in her elder sisters.
Both her sisters confirmed to the police that Simran often complained about their father’s behaviour. In their statement seen by ThePrint, they wrote that they tried to counsel their father and “scold” him. One of her sister’s told the court that Simran was “mentally depressed”. She also accepted that while Simran wanted to lodge a police complaint, she stopped her, “due to fear of relatives and close ones and for social stigma”.
In his statement to the police, her paternal uncle said Simran often confided in her sisters about her father’s inappropriate behaviour. “However, nobody believed her,” he said in the statement submitted in May 2014, seen by ThePrint.
Dressed in bright green salwar and yellow kurta, with red and white chura (bangles) on both her arms, Simran is now married. “I really want to start living my life,” she says with a tinge of sadness. “He is free, I am the one still struggling.”
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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