BHOPAL: 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 of her traumatized 12-year marriage in a family counseling 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 of the family counseling centre gasped in shock, Times of India said.
Even more disturbing was the husband’s behavior. He is a farmer, identified as Suresh Mahar of village Kondhar, 30 km from Multai town. When summoned, the man came to the counseling center and confessed he had done exactly as his wife claimed for the past 11 years. I looked after her well for one year after the marriage,” he said. Then it all went wrong.” He agreed being a habitual alcoholic and under intoxication made his wife to dance naked before him. 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 counseling centre is within the premises of Kotwali police station in Multai town. But even as the woman recounted the years of her disturbed marriage with a fearful husband, the husband remained calm. He apologised to her in front of the police and family counseling 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 had had enough. She refused to go back to her husband and wanted custody of her two children instead. According to the police at the Multai police station, 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 criminal case against the husband, police inspector-in-charge of Multai MM Choudhary said: Family Counselling Centres have been established to deal with domestic harassment cases and husband-wife issues like this one. If the family counseling center sends us a recommendation for police action, then we immediately start our investigations. But till now, the family counseling center has sent us nothing regarding this case.”