Bhopal, August 28: "My husband strips me naked every night and compels me to dance nude, sometimes in front of my children. He urinates on my food and forces me to consume the same," a 30-year-old woman narrated a harrowing tale of torture, she is suffering in 12 years of her marriage, to members of a family counselling centre in Betul district on Sunday. "Please help me separate from him. Send me back to my mother's house so I don't have to undergo this mental and physical harassment anymore,'' she said weeping uncontrollably even as six members at the counseling centre listened to her in shock.
Even more disturbing was the husband's behaviour. He is a farmer, identified as Suresh Mahar from village Kondhar, 30 km from Multai town. When summoned, the man came to the counselling centre and to confessed to doing exactly in the past 11 years what his wife claimed. "I looked after her well for one year after the marriage,'' he said. "Then it all went wrong." He agreed to being a habitual alcoholic and that he made his wife to dance naked before him under the influence of liquor. He also accepted that he made her consume his urine.
On March 13, the woman registered her first complaint against her husband in the local police station. On July 20, he went back to the police and registered yet another complaint. But instead of arresting the husband, the police sent her to the family counselling centre on Sunday.
The counselling centre is on the same the premises as the Kotwali police station in Multai town. But even as the woman recounted her husband's savagery, the husband showed no signs of remorse. He apologised to her in front of the police and family counselling members and coaxed her to go back home with him. He held his ears and publicly did some sitting and standing squats arguing he was sorry for his past deeds and would never repeat the same in future.
But his wife has had enough. She refused to go back to her husband and wanted custody of her two children instead. Cops at the Multai police station said the woman took her sons and shifted to her mother's house in Chichkheda village, 32 km from the town.
Asked why there was no action and a criminal case against the husband, police inspector in-charge of Multai M M Choudhary said: "Family counselling centres have been set up to deal with domestic harassment cases and husband-wife issues like this one. If the family counselling centre sends us a recommendation for the police action, then we immediately start our investigations. But till now, the family counselling centre has sent us nothing regarding this case.''
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