Suicides that never become a Rohith Vemula or arrests that never become a Kanhaiya Kumar

Let me begin by first apologising to you Rohith. For using your name to bring attention to departure of another soul Dr. Sahul Kundara who was also abused for his caste, his life snuffed out way too early – not because of politics but because of laws that reduce identity of a man to his gender.

Laws that are so pro women and anti men that mere threats of being implicated in one is driving many to suicide. I am using your name Rohith because even though I have seen numerous suicides by innocents like Dr. Sahul because of abuse of the law, I have never seen a discussion on them in Parliament nor seen mass rallies taken out for them seeking "justice".

Rohith, you said no one was responsible for your suicide, but some people are still asking for punishments to those who they think are responsible for your death. I am using your name in a hope that the same people would rise up for Justice for Sahul too especially when he clearly mentioned names of those responsible for his death!

Sahul Kundara, a young man in his late twenties from Jaipur committed suicide by jumping in front of a train on February 20 leaving a nine-page long suicide note, copy of which has been printed by Dainik Bhaskar newspaper. He has blamed his wife, her parents and her uncle for driving him to death.

In a heart wrenching note that would perhaps not appeal to intellectual scholars since it doesn’t have any philosophical verses, he details how he was poisoned by his in-laws, threatened with false cases and demanded Rs 8 lakh by them. He was beaten up, abused for his caste and threatened with a false rape case by a policeman at the behest of his wife’s parents.

Quoting a few lines from the suicide note: “This is not a suicide. It’s a Murder!

My Name is Sahul Kundara. It’s February 20th today. I got married to Varsha on November 10, 2014 and we were living together since August 2015. Varsha and her family members always threatened to implicate me in false cases. They demanded 8 lac rupees from me. When I asked them from where I will bring so much money, they said that they don’t care about that.

They poisoned me and when I wanted to complain, in conspiracy with my in-laws, the ASI or SI Ajeet beat me up outside the police station saying “M*****r F*****r, you will file a case against these people?”

He asked me about my caste and when I told him I am a Bairwa(Schedule Caste), he abused me over my caste saying “Have you forgotten your place? You lower caste people will form relationship with upper caste people? I will strip your skin and make a shoe out of it and wear. And if you dare speak up again, I will get you behind bars in a rape case.”

This entire episode was a planning of Varsha, her parents and her relatives along with the policeman. All this happened at the Rajender Park police station. They forced me to sign on papers that I ate some medicine beyond its expiry date which was all a lie. They had poisoned me. They threatened me that they will put my entire family also behind bars and that I should do what they are saying. I went into deep mental trauma after that. These people are very powerful and they can do anything.”

If Suhal was a student of Hyderabad or Jadavpur or Jawaharlal Nehru University, lines from his suicide note would have been read out in Parliament, adding fuel to fire burning over Rohith’s suicide. But then neither was he a student raising slogans over “judicial killing” of Afzal Guru or Yakub Memon nor was he important as a vote bank in the current political discourse over ‘caste.’

He wasn’t a Kanhaiya or Umar Khalid either, fighting for their right of opinion that Afzal Guru was hanged not because he was a terrorist but because of strong collective conscience of people. Sahul was just a boy next door who fell in love over internet and got married. He was a son who did not want to get his parents into trouble because of cases on them.

He was a man who saw no way out from threats he was subjected to because he could be falsely implicated in any law made for women just because he was a “man.” So the collective conscience of intellectuals can comfortably give this death a miss.

In last one week alone, three cases of suicide have come to my knowledge where the deceased stated false cases and harassment by in-laws as the reason for suicide. Not sure how many would have happened in reality.

One of them was that of a young 26-year-old Prakash Jangid from Indore who jumped in front of a truck to kill himself. He was slapped with a dowry case by his in-laws and separated from his wife and child because he refused to live with them leaving his parents alone.

None of these cases have been discussed in the national media or become a reason for debate over “suicide.” Because they are written off usually as suicides due to depression or “family problems.” And if I talk about them, I am questioned “How do you know it was a false case?” These are the same people who question the conviction of a terrorist by highest court of India, but hold a man guilty on mere accusations by a woman in an FIR!!

Over the last few days I have witnessed the controversy around “Anti-India” or if I may rather say slogans that meant “destruction of India” in JNU campus.

Journalists who have themselves run kangaroo courts or aired only one side of the story in cases of crime against women are accusing other journalist of being biased and running one-sided propaganda in JNU case.

Journalists, who have several shows and news stories to their credit where they declared a man guilty before any sort of trial by court and never apologized even after their honourable acquittals, are now asking other journalists and news channels to apologize for airing a doctored video.

One of them, crying buckets over arrest of one alleged innocent Kanhaiya and asking people how they can sleep when an innocent is in jail, expresses nothing when so many innocents - men, women children are arrested under gender based laws sans iota of evidence everyday!

In those cases accusation becomes evidence of guilt or maybe it doesn’t evoke the conscience of these people. It is strange that the same people who are distressed and disturbed over them being called as anti-nationals because of their different views of ‘nationalism’ do not flinch a bit before dubbing me and people like me “anti-woman” because we choose to raise voice for men falsely accused by women and have different views than them of 'feminism'.

One of these ‘secular’ legal experts who has called me a rape apologist on twitter and wants feminist jurisprudence to be followed in courts, ridicules ASJ Nivedita Anil Sharma of “returning to usual form” when she says “It’s time to protect men from false rape cases.” Amusing how people who don’t believe innocence of an ordinary man acquitted from a false case after a complete trial, want to declare students accused of raising anti-India slogans “innocent” without any trial!

I am surprised some students of JNU and journalists who are standing in solidarity with them, rising up against alleged judicial injustice to likes of Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon never get time to rise up against injustice to a common man like Gopal Shetye who spent seven years in prison under wrong charges of rape because of mistaken identity with the real accused whose name was 'Gopi'.

They don’t organise protests for a man like Niranjan Kumar Mandal who spent four years in prison, falsely implicated by the police in the infamous Mayapuri rape case in 2006. Mandal approached Supreme Court in 2013, to “return his dignity” since no media ever reported his acquittal.

It fails me how people so concerned with justice do not question lynching of a rape accused in Nagaland by a mob when it wasn’t even known whether the charges were true or false (the case has gone in cold storage now.) They also do not mind if a woman from their own university implicates any man in a false molestation/rape case because of political vendetta and that man is arrested, expelled or his career destroyed.

In fact while they cry over media trials now, they participate in these very media trials when the one being lynched by media is not one of their “own.” Ironically, their leader who is now saying “Naaro ka Naaro se, vichaaron ka vichaaron se jawaab do” expresses no concern when verbal arguments between a man and a woman leads to criminal charge of molestation on the man. When I was on a show during Jasleen Kaur’s case in Delhi, I was lynched on social media by followers of these very leaders who called me rape apologist, a rapist pimp and much more just because I requested that the boy’s side should also be heard! Well, the double standards are just too many to point out.

Today, I am writing this piece because I am confident that the politicians, who walked “Chalo Delhi” rally for Justice to Rohith, wouldn’t care to even to make a call to the Delhi Commissioner of Police ordering an Inquiry into Sahul’s suicide and action against the policeman who threatened him with a false rape case, hurling casteist remarks as mentioned in his suicide note.

None of them would travel to Jaipur to meet his parents and know their pain because this case this wouldn’t get them any media bytes or appeasement of a certain community or opportunity to criticize the government. Sahul’s death or suicides of many like him do not represent any political opportunity but raises uncomfortable questions on the gender discourse that is focused on atrocities against women only today.

Speaking on such cases gathers only wrath from women rights groups and feminists – so why take the risk?

I am writing this piece to see if any of the journalists or social activists or caste atrocity crusaders will take up case of Sahul and get his parents some justice. To just share, nothing has happened in the case so far, except registration of an FIR.

Last but not the least – if you are too angry after reading this piece because of my opinion over gender issues, kindly ignore these opinions (backed by real stories) just the way you are expecting the entire nation to ignore yours over anti-India slogan issue.

Thanks!

(Author Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj is a documentary filmmaker and a social activist. She writes on misuse of women centric laws in India and can be reached at [email protected]. The views in the article are personal and does not reflect the stand of CNN-IBN/ IBNLive)