On December 9, Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence engineer Atul Subhash died by suicide alleging harassment from his estranged wife and her family members. The techie’s tragic death led to a huge social media uproar followed by widespread media coverage which saw several news anchors making impassioned pleas for justice for Subhash and his family.
However, flying in the face of suicide reporting guidelines and best media practices, much of the coverage on television channels focused on sensationalising the tragedy, turning it into a ‘men versus women’ battleground with broadcast journalists fuming against alleged abuse of dowry and domestic violence laws in the name of “women empowerment.”
As sensitive, objective reporting remained largely missing from TV screens, social media discourse led by YouTubers with lakhs of subscribers blamed women for the death of 34-year-old Subhash and “thousands like him.”
News channels train guns at ‘biased’ laws
Listing out laws against domestic violence and dowry in her show The Urban Debate, Mirror Now’s executive editor Shreya Dhoundial declared that such legislations were anti-men. “Do you notice something common in all these laws? They all exist for the benefit of women against men,” she said.
India TV’s Rajat Sharma claimed that Subhash’s case proved how “cruel” anti-dowry laws were. He blamed the laws for forcing a man to take his own life.
In his alleged suicide note, Subhash had accused his estranged wife Nikita Singhania, and her family, of filing eight “fake” cases including those of harassment for dowry, domestic violence, attempt to murder, and financial exploitation. Singhania, who was arrested from Gurugram and was sent to 14-day judicial custody, has denied all the allegations. According to media reports, during police interrogation, she said that it was Subhash who harassed her.
While this wasn’t the only coverage on the issue by the channels, these segments were particularly egregious. Moreover, nuanced, sensitive and objective reporting on different aspects of the case remained largely absent from the news.
Men’s rights champions
Over at Aaj Tak, Sudhir Chaudhary even went on to claim that it was the first time in history that a man in this country was asking for equality from the system. Chaudhary chose to ignore the fact that his own colleagues had reported on filing of false criminal cases by women on several occasions.
Republic World’s editor-in-chief Arnab Goswami questioned why advocates of women’s rights were quiet about Subhash’s death and why they viewed men’s rights as something that must be denied.
His accusations did not take into account that several activists and organisations working on women’s rights had bemoaned Subhash’s death and also called for a holistic response to cases of men being victimised by laws. In a statement released against the backdrop of Subhash’s death, Naveddu Nilladiddare, a coalition of organisations and individuals advocating for women’s and human rights issues, said, “Measures must be put into place that ensure that this system, which implements these laws, be sensitised, held accountable, and checks and balances instituted in ways that do not victimise men in unfair ways or trivialise violence against women, making a mockery of their fundamental right to life, dignity and security.”
“...Will women admit that dowry law and domestic violence are the most misused laws? I read everyday that men are the targets of domestic violence and men are murdered by their wives every second day. It’s a dangerous law,” Goswami further proclaimed on his show. To cement the death as a battleground between men’s rights and feminism, he claimed that had the suicide victim been a woman who faced harrasment from her husband’s family, people would be shouting from the rooftops for justice.
A similar line was adopted by News18 India’s Rubika Liyaquat who slammed financially independent and “empowered” women for misusing dowry and domestic violence laws when their marriages fell apart. She also said that if instead of an Atul, the case involved a woman named Anita, everyone would be wondering what has happened to the society. She blamed independent women for “weaponising” the law and exploiting men.
Providing some relief, her colleague Zakka Jacob presented the case in a much more balanced fashion. While maintaining that there should be an investigation before a domestic violence case is filed, he said that figures from the National Crime Records Bureau showed that the number of women who either die by suicide or are killed over dowry outnumber men by a huge margin.
“Dowry is always demanded by the groom’s family from the bride’s family and that is the reason the current anti-dowry laws exist,” he said. “How do you justify having gender neutral laws when society itself is not neutral towards women?...It is fairly stacked up against women, that's why you have 498A.”
Section 498 A of the Indian Penal Code criminalised subjecting women to cruelty by a husband or his family.
Implying more men suffered than women because of marital woes, men right’s activists repeatedly asserted on news channels that “about 90,000 married men commit suicide every year in India, compared to 30,000 married women.” While the numbers cited is close to the NCRB data for 2022– 83,713 married men and 30,771 in India died by suicide– their is no evidence to link the suicides by men to marital issues or false cases.
Violation of suicide reporting guidelines
Much of the news coverage and social media discourse on Subhash’s death also violated several guidelines adopted by the Press Council of India on suicide reporting.
Based on recommendations made by the World Health Organisation and global best practices, PCI guidelines prohibit language “which sensationalises or normalises suicide or presents it as a constructive solution to problems”. It vehemently discourages describing the method used, and use of sensational headlines for suicide reporting. The guidelines also forbid the use of photographs, video footage or social media links in stories.
Yet, many news channels described in great detail how Subhash ended his life and also shared photos of how his body was found. The alleged video suicide note he left behind was broadcast repeatedly, sometimes in full, by several media houses.
In complete disregard to global practices and PCI guidelines, some news anchors did not even shy away from presenting suicide as the only solution to Subhash’s woes. “Imagine the plight of a man who has lost everything, family, life, cheated by the system, what options does he have?” remarked Navika Kumar during a panel discussion on Times Now.
On TV9 Bharatvarsh, model Charu Sharma, who was invited as a panelist for reasons best known to the channel, even went on to claim that had Subhash consulted a psychologist or a psychiatrist using some of the money he kept talking about in his video note, then he wouldn’t have had to take the extreme step of taking his own life. In response, men’s rights activist and lawyer Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj called Sharma “insane” and said, “People like you are the ones who don’t let them live.”
The ensuing loud and heated war of words between the two women drowned the voice of grief-stricken Bikas Kumar, Subhash’s younger brother.
At Republic World, Goswami even asked a panelist “why he couldn’t stop Subhash from taking his own life” despite “knowing him well” and “spending time with him”. Anil Murthy, co-founder of Save Indian Family Foundation, a men’s rights group of which the deceased was a part, replied to Goswami saying Subhash was not categorised by the organisation as a person thought to be in danger of taking their own life. Subhash was “very jovial, practical” and “the last person to commit suicide,” Murthy said.
Social media discourse ignores official data
Such misguided conversations extended to social media platforms where several men’s rights activists declared that women issues like dowry deaths were a thing of the past.
However, NCRB data shows that at least 6,450 dowry-related deaths were recorded in 2022 alone. As many as 13, 479 cases were registered under the Dowry Prohibition Act, 1961, the same year. According to the figures for 2022, the latest year for which NCRB figures are available, 359 dowry deaths were closed due to inefficient evidence despite the complaints being true.
It should also be noted that several women hesitate to report cases and the number of crimes committed against them are grossly underreported. Sample this: While the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey found that almost 30 percent of married Indian women between the age 18 to 49 experienced domestic or sexual violence, in 2022, the NCRB recorded only a little over 1,40,000 cases of domestic violence.
Despite such alarming figures, several social media influencers claimed that women in India did not suffer anymore.
“Patriarchy is something women experienced in the past…Women may have suffered earlier but men are still suffering today,” said YouTuber Rajat Pawar in a video watched nearly 9,80,000 times since December 16. Pawar, who boasts of over 33 lakh subscribers, claimed that men like Subhash are not believed by society but on the other hand women are assumed to be always speaking the truth. “Men are paying the price of male dominance and patriarchy practised on women by men from previous generations,” he claimed.
Malayalam YouTuber Jaiby Joseph, with 2,63,000 subscribers, even argued that women now have the same access to education and employment opportunities as men and were paid the same wages. According to the 75th round of National Sample Survey on ‘Household Social Consumption: Education’, the male literacy rate was 14 percentage points higher than female literacy rate which stood at 70.3 percent.
On Instagram, lawyer Manas Dixit questioned the relevance of anti-dowry laws. Content creator-couple Abhi and Niyu claimed to more than 67 lakh subscribers that such “gender-biased laws” sent women the message that “they needed extra protection because they were weak”. Low conviction rate in dowry or domestic violence cases was cited frequently as evidence of most complaints filed by women as being false, turning a blind eye to the complexities on the ground.
Lawyer and women’s rights activist Flavia Agnes told Newslaundry it’s not a “straightforward issue”.
“A lot of times, the accused party pressurises for the charges to be removed in order for a settlement [out of court] to work out. That does not mean the complaints are false. Women who have been in abusive marriages often just want to move on,” she said. “All laws get misused, but in cases where there is violence against women, especially at home, women have to go to the police multiple times just to convince them to file a case.”
Agnes also pointed out that women dying because of dowry demands and domestic violence, including complaints recorded by NCRB and unreported cases, was so common that it did not even make it to the news any longer. “Just because it is not reported in depth or sensationalised, does not mean it did not happen. It actually happens so much that it is simply not considered news anymore,” she said.
Speaking on the media discourse around Subhash’s suicide, she said, “The men versus women narrative this case has taken is very dangerous. Society is not divided like that. It is very harmful to the women's movement and how far it has come.”
Newslaundry reached out to Republic World, Mirror Now, India TV, Aaj Tak, Times Now, and TV9 Bharatvarsh with the queries on the matter. This report will be updated on receiving their response.
If you or someone you know is experiencing thoughts of suicide, we urge you to seek help. Please call one of the helpline numbers listed here or contact a mental health professional.
In times of misinformation, you need news you can trust. We’ve got you covered. Subscribe to Newslaundry and power our work.
Newslaundry is a reader-supported, ad-free, independent news outlet based out of New Delhi. Support their journalism, here.
