'Hysteric, clumsy fall, kitchen mishap': Tales of Indian housewives who die suspiciously

About 16 Indian married women died suspiciously in 2024 and that too every single day, stated the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB).

The number gets worse as one trails back in records with about 61 dying almost everyday in 2021.

These deaths are legally attributed to dowry demands, domestic cruelty and under other suspicious circumstances.

However, socially these cases are expressed using an alternative vocabulary, frequently garbed in a defensive diction.

Very often the kin of women who die suspiciously present the tragedy differently — they call it ‘marriage trouble’, ‘mentally unstable’, or a fiery kitchen accident that consumed her in the moment. 

But what really causes these women to die? — a common curiosity which has tickled those who see these deaths more than tragedies but a disturbing pattern fueled by socio-cultural forces.

The parallel cases of Twisha Sharma (33) and Deepika Nagar (25) who both apparently committed suicide are triggering many different kinds of narratives in the present day.

‘Death from Hanging’ 

Speaking to NDTV,  Twisha’s mother-in-law Giribala Singh, who is also a retired judge called her ‘schizophrenic’ and ‘troubled personality’ following her committing suicide in her matrimonial home in Bhopal.

The deceased 33-year-old was found dead from hanging just after five months into a marriage. 

Girbala Singh went on air to talk about the events that might have caused Twisha to take her life.

She accused her of being on narcotics while she was pregnant, aborting her baby and needing constant monitoring. She also accused her parents of having pushed Twisha into the glamour world and later disowned her.

While the postmortem report was consistent with suicide, there were additional bruises, particularly blunt-force injuries which were inflicted before hanging. 

Twisha’s parents, who see it as a dowry death, have filed a plea to seek another postmortem examination for clarity. However, it got rejected by the Bhopal court.

Both Giribala Singh and her son Samarth Singh, who is on the run, are the alleged accused in the case.

‘Fell off the roof’

Another horrific case from Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida is gaining attention among people. The deceased is a 25-year-old Deepika Nagar who was found dead after falling off the roof of her three-storey matrimonial house.

Allegedly, the young woman suffered assault over dowry demands and this is suspected to have caused her to kill herself.

Dowry operates under different names

Both these cases and many others have direct or indirect ties to domestic dysfunction, particularly dowry and emotional abuse.

The Dowry Prohibition Act came into force in India on July 1, 1961. While illegal constitutionally, the instances of it never really stopped to happen.

Despite the Indian Penal Code (Section 304B) calling dowry death a criminal offence if it caused a  woman to die by burns, bodily injury or under suspicious circumstances, it never entirely prevented  people from finding alternative ways to keep the system alive.

Speaking to DH, Dr. Munia Bhattacharya, a senior psychologist at Marengo Asia Hospitals (Gurugram) said: “ Dowry has changed its language with time. In many modern households, it is no longer a direct demand but survives quietly through gifts, entitlement, status pressure, financial expectations, emotional humiliation, and through a belief that a woman must endlessly keep proving her worth to be accepted. Cases like Deepika and Twisha disturb people because many women silently recognise parts of their own lives in these stories.”

Some experts find this social evil as a direct reflection on how daughters are perceived as a financial burden in society.

Speaking to DH, Chetna Luthra, another clinical psychologist at Marengo Asia Hospitals (Gurugram) said: “Dowry works on transaction and not on emotional ties but parents still go ahead with it. This happens because they associate daughters with a huge financial responsibility. The excessive fear of their daughters not finding a suitable match makes them comply with the groom’s unreasonable demands.”

Scapegoat for household dysfunction

As per multiple studies, women are more prone to anxiety and other mood disorders. However, environmental forces around them have a significant role to play.

“In many dysfunctional families, protecting the image of the family becomes more important than understanding the emotional damage happening inside it. Labelling the woman as mentally unhealthy becomes the easiest escape route. If she reacts, cries, withdraws, or breaks down, her response becomes the issue instead of the environment that pushed her to react a certain way” said Dr. Bhattacharya.

The specialist explained how the human mind does not collapse overnight but rather the emotional exhaustion builds in slowly. Constant criticism, disrespect, manipulation, comparisons, silent treatment, or being made to feel unwanted can deeply affect a person’s mental health.

Some mental health experts believe that very often in Indian households, a woman’s emotional distress is turned into a social weapon to avoid accountability for the already existing dysfunction in the house. This also causes the pathological terms to be used incorrectly by people who aren’t authorised to diagnose a mental disorder.

Speaking to DH, Dr. Pretty Duggar Gupta, a psychiatrist at Aster Hospital (Whitefield, Bengaluru) said: “A constant exposure to coercive control and emotional invalidation can make anyone hypervigilant, emotionally exhausted and lose self esteem even if there is no primary psychiatric disorder in the person.”

When a person’s emotions, memories, perceptions or reactions are continually negated until they start to doubt their own reality, this can make them push harder for truth but instead get labelled as ‘difficult’, said Dr. Deepika Sharma, a clinical psychologist at the Asian Hospital.

Also, an emotional reaction to abuse can be confused with a psychiatric concern, however, just like a court of judgement has the sole right to a verdict, a mental health diagnosis must only come from qualified specialists and not from social judgements or perception, the experts have advised.