'Threatened, beaten, forced to say I was a sex slave’: Kerala woman on alleged dowry torture

Revealing severe injuries on her body was the only way a 24-year-old woman from Kerala’s Neendakara could convince those back home that all the ‘horrible stories’ they heard about her were untrue. Returning home from her husband in Saudi Arabia on September 30, the woman alleged weeks of physical abuse, including stabbing and whipping at his hands, during which she was forced to record false and obscene narrations about herself that he would send to everyone at home. Hearing her voice, even her family was shocked, not knowing what to believe; the woman told TNM from her home in Kollam, where she is recuperating. 

Nandu Dinesh (28), the woman’s husband, a Kollam native who is currently employed in Saudi Arabia, allegedly abused her over dowry as well as deep-seated suspicions. 

“He would point a knife at me and threaten to kill me before forcing me to record untrue stories that he fabricated or imagined, because he is a deeply suspicious person. He behaved like a psycho with me,” the woman said.

In those narrations about herself, she said, she was forcefully portrayed as a woman with loose morals, interested in sleeping with many men and then making videos of it and uploading them on porn sites to make money. “He made me say these things, made me say I am a sex slave and then he sent it to my family and his, as well as everyone in our immediate circle,” she said.

Among the tools used for assault that she mentioned were a pressure cooker, his belt and a stone grinder to beat her with, and a knife and a screwdriver to stab and poke without making it deep. The doctors who treated her on coming back filled three sheets of paper with the list of her injuries, she said.

On top of the physical abuse, he also insulted her by calling her a “total waste” and “lacking quality of character” and comparing her looks with his former girlfriends, she alleged.

‘Suspicious even before marriage, got worse in Saudi’

The couple got married in June this year, and the woman alleges that the harassment began a few weeks into the wedding, though Nandu has been suspicious of her even before that.

“Even before marriage, Nandu was suspicious, questioning me about returning his calls late, asking me constantly if I did not love him. But these were not asked angrily, and I didn't think much more of it. After marriage, he would question me about my friends, about who I go with, where I go. When he left for his job in Saudi, he would call me and ask me to share my screen on WhatsApp and other social media apps. Later, he would speak lovingly and tell me it was because he was lonely there that he tended to overthink, and asked me to join him. That's how I went to Saudi in September,” she said.

The physical abuse began in Saudi, but she was mentally harassed for the lack of dowry even before, comparing the amount that Nandu’s family had spent on his sister’s wedding, she alleged. His parents, Dinesh and Jagadamma, had not physically abused her but often used to make references to the dowry they gave for their daughter and the dowries given in other marriages, she said. Later, they were also aware that Nandu used to hit her, she told TNM. 

In Saudi, his accusations turned wild, and he took away her phone and laptop so that she would not be able to contact anyone, she said. 

“He would also lock me in the house before he went to work. When it got so bad, I said I would die, and for the next two days he stayed home and continued to assault me. After that, he would drag me to the kitchen and ask me to cook for him. In the last few days there, I had been starved too,” she said.

As soon as she got back on September 30, nearly a month after her stay in Saudi Arabia with Nandu, she was taken to a karayogam (a community meeting) to discuss the matter, with her family, her in-laws and others. 

“There, I had to hear my character being assassinated by others before I had a chance to remove my hoodie and show them my arms covered in injuries. I told them there are worse wounds on the rest of the body, and it was by assaulting me so fiercely that he made me say these things,” she said.

The marriage lasted three months, including the one she spent in Saudi. She is proceeding with divorce, she said, because “it is my life I would lose otherwise.”

The Chavara Police have registered a case against Nandu under sections 85 (husband subjecting a woman to cruelty), 115-2 (voluntarily causing hurt), 118-1 (causing hurt using dangerous weapons), 351-3 (criminal intimidation), 3-5 (several persons doing a criminal act with common intention) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and section 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act of 1961. 

Dinesh and Jagadamma have also been named in the FIR for dowry harassment.