The Indian man who burnt his wife for birthing daughters

IN an extremely bizarre incident, a 32-year-old man in the Maharashtra’s Parbhani district of India was recently arrested for setting his wife ablaze after she gave birth to their third daughter. The tragic event took place in Gangakhed Naka, approximately 520 kilometres from Mumbai. According to local news agencies, the accused, Kundlik Uttam Kale, had a history of taunting his wife, Maina, over the fact that she had given birth to three daughters. As stated in a complaint filed by Maina’s sister and confirmed by the police, the suspects frequently engaged his wife in a hot argument over the sex of their children. Said the police: “On Thursday night, after one such argument, he poured petrol on her and set her ablaze. She ran out of the house screaming and people tried to douse the fire. However, by then, she was severely burnt and died while being rushed to a hospital.”Kale has since been arrested on charges of murder, according to authorities at the Gangakhed police station.

Like many societies of the world, substantial portions of the Indian society still have not outgrown the needless preference for male children.  In July 2019, after government data revealed that no girl had been born in 132 villages in three months, officials in a northern Indian state launched a probe to determine whether sex-selective abortions, a practice common in the country, had been perpetrated. The government’s source of worry:  947 children had been born across 500 villages in Uttarakhand state’s Uttarkashi district and among 200 of such births in 132 of the villages, none was a female child. Consequently, the Uttarkashi district administration marked the 132 villages as a “red zone” and constituted a team of 25 officials to investigate the matter.  Rekha Arya, Uttarakhand’s Minister of Women and Child Welfare,  suggested that the situation could be a mere coincidence,  but women’s rights activists dismissed the claim.

To say the least, this story is chilling. It is troubling that a woman lost her life on account of factors that were clearly beyond her control. If  the victim, Maina, and her husband had daughters, it was because that was what their intimate union produced. It had nothing to do with her by way of personal choice. And, in any case, there is absolutely nothing wrong with having male or female children, because the human society is constituted by the two genders, even in parts of the world where people speak of the so-called gender fluidity. To Kale’s perverse mind, the deceased was deliberately giving him female children, and it seems sufficiently clear that the couple’s daughters would have suffered untold pain on realising that their father, aided by certain cultural beliefs, had a problem with their gender. It definitely sounds odd that a man would argue with his wife over the sex of their children in this day and age, but that is the disturbing reality in many parts of the world where certain people act as if female children are somehow less deserving of affection because of their gender. This is barbaric and horrendous, and governments the world over must deploy every arsenal at their disposal in fighting this malaise.

If girls are not born, how can those who want only male children actualise their desire? Is giving birth a male job? If those who had female children had killed them on account of their sex, where would those who harangue their wives for having female children children have got their wives from? Do they even pause to think that the male children they so desperately crave for will still need females to reproduce? In the case of the suspect under reference, is he so ignorant that he does not realise that the sex of a baby is not unilaterally determined? And why is the self-imposed and self-executed sentence of murder the remedy for his situation? Kale’s action is sheer display of madness. It shows callous disregard for human life and must be punished with the severest sentence imposed by the law. The government and the Indian society must not allow the image of a burning married woman desperately seeking help from nearby shops and other houses, which also came under the blaze, to be erased from their memory. The government must send a loud and clear message to criminals like Kale that cruel treatment of women will not be tolerated in the Indian society. As we have said time and again, crime thrives in the society when there are no consequences for it. When would-be murderers know the sad fate that awaits them if and when caught, they will think twice before going ahead with their plan to terminate human life.  The world should treat spouse killers like the callous criminals that they are. They are of no use to the human society and should be given a quick passport to hell.

As members of the global human community, we are saddened by the fate that has befallen Maina. We mourn with her family and loved ones and urge governments all over the world to take action against gender-based violence. May her soul rest in sweet repose.

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