Manjeet Kaur, a 28-year-old social-media influencer from Kharar, died at Chandigarh’s PGIMER on August 26 after fighting for her life for 54 days. According to the complaint filed by her mother, two acquaintances called her to Chandigarh on July 3, forced her into a car and took her to Morinda. There, she was assaulted, tied to a mulberry tree and set on fire. She was rescued and taken to hospital, but the burns proved fatal. She leaves behind a seven-year-old son.
Read those facts again. A young woman was tied to a tree and burnt. A small boy has lost his mother. Yet beyond the news reports, the response has been strangely muted. Where is the anger? Where are the public meetings, the marches, the candlelight gatherings and the voices that usually speak of women’s safety? How much more brutal must a crime be before it disturbs our daily lives?
I find the silence of women particularly hard to understand. Many of us are cosseted in comfort. We spend time deciding what to wear, where to eat and which photograph to post. There is nothing wrong with any of that. But can we not pause, even for a minute, to speak for a woman who was tied to a tree and set on fire? Can we not say that her life mattered?
Women’s organisations and human-rights activists carry a special responsibility here. Their support cannot depend on whether they approve of a victim’s clothes, language, profession or social-media content. Women’s rights mean little if they are reserved for women who are quiet, “respectable” and easy to defend. The cause must also include women who are loud, unfashionable, controversial or simply unknown. Each is entitled to life, safety and justice.
Punjab faced a similar horror in June 2025. Kanchan Kumari, known online as Kamal Kaur Bhabhi, was called to Bathinda for what she was told was a promotional assignment. Police say she was strangled and her body was left in her car. The alleged motive was moral policing: some men decided that her videos were vulgar and that they had the right to punish her. The man named as the alleged mastermind was deported from the UAE, and a Bathinda court has framed murder charges. The case is still before the court.
Also Read: Kanchan Kumari was killed for giving men what they want. And that’s the real obscenity
When victims are put on trial
The two crimes are not known to be connected. The motive in Manjeet’s case is still unclear. Yet the public response to both cases reveals the same discomfort. Instead of beginning with the violence, people begin with the woman. What did she post? How did she speak? What was her reputation? These questions quietly shift attention from the men accused of violence to the conduct of the woman who is dead.
After Kanchan’s murder, the Punjab State Commission for Women did condemn the crime, and the police acted against 106 social-media accounts that supported or justified it. Those actions mattered, but they did not produce a broad and lasting campaign across political parties, women’s groups, universities, civil society and the Punjabi entertainment world. The silence became even more disturbing when Giani Malkit Singh, then head granthi of the Akal Takht, reportedly said that “nothing wrong” had happened.
Neither Sikhi nor any other religion gives a man the right to pass a death sentence on a woman because he dislikes her videos. Guru Nanak asked, “So kio manda aakhiye, jit jammeh raajaan?” — why call her inferior, when kings are born from her? A faith that challenged the low status given to women cannot be used to defend their murder. Sikh institutions should have answered the reported remark immediately and without qualification.
These two murders warn us how quickly a woman can be judged, blamed and harmed, and how easily society may put her conduct on trial instead of protecting her.
A society cannot call itself progressive merely because it has shiny malls, luxury cars, smartphones and successful women in a few high offices. Its progress is measured by how safe ordinary women feel, how quickly the police act when they are threatened, and whether the public stands with them when they are attacked. A society that does not care for its women has no claim to being progressive. Social-media threats and open praise for murder must be treated as warning signs, not dismissed as online noise.
The rest of us also owe something to the seven-year-old boy who has lost his mother in one of the cruellest ways imaginable. He should grow up knowing that she mattered, that women spoke for her, and that society demanded justice instead of placing his mother’s life on trial after her death.
Poonam Khaira Sidhu is a former IRS officer, University of Michigan–trained LLM and economist, and published author with articles in international journals and Indian newspapers, specialising in international tax and public policy. Views are personal.
(Edited by Asavari Singh)