What the uproar over Atul Subhash’s death by suicide says about gender relations in India

On the night of December 9, a 34-year-old technology professional died by suicide in his home in Bengaluru. Atul Subhash left behind a video, an alleged suicide note and several letters that detail his embattled marriage and divorce proceedings.

The 81-minute-long video, in which Subhash accused his wife and her family of harassing him by demanding Rs 3 crore to settle the case, led to a social media uproar.

Several men’s rights organisations rallied around Subhash’s death, holding it up as an example of how laws against domestic violence and dowry meant to protect women were being weaponised against men.

Arun Murty, who heads the Save Indian Family Foundation, told Scroll that Subhash’s purported suicide note was a “manifesto in the fight for men’s rights”. Subhash was a member of Murty’s organisation.

A week after his death, his wife, Nikita Singhania, was arrested by the Bengaluru police with her mother and brother on the allegation that they had abetted Subhash’s suicide.

How has a single case galvanised audiences and supporters far beyond the fringe activism of men’s rights? Men’s rights activists say that Subhash’s death has struck a chord as it confirms the extent to which Indian men are being victimised by dowry and domestic violence laws.

Experts and gender activists, however, point out that the outrage over the unfortunate death of the IT professional is a sign of deep-seated misogyny in Indian life. “That [Atul Subhash’s death] could be used as a stick to beat all women with, and to suggest that every woman is misusing laws is typical of what has happened for years, for decades,” said veteran journalist Kalpana Sharma.

The charges and counter-charges

Singhania had filed for divorce and alimony in a family court in Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh, in January 2022.

Her plea alleged intimidation, humiliation, assault and harassment for a dowry of Rs 10 lakh by Subhash and his family soon after the couple got married in June 2019. She also claimed that her father died of a cardiac arrest two months after her wedding, as Subhash’s parents went to her home and threatened to break off the marriage if they were not paid.

Even after her father’s death, and the birth of her son in February 2020, Subhash continued to assault her physically and mentally, and would demand unnatural sex in a drunken state, the plea said.

She made similar allegations in a first information report registered in Jaunpur in April 2022. Based on the FIR, the police booked Subhash, his parents and his brother for cruelty, intimidation and harm under the Indian Penal Code and the Dowry Prohibition Act. Among the sections invoked was Section 498A, which is used against a man or his relatives accused of subjecting his wife of cruelty in order to demand dowry or to drive her to self-harm.

Subhash denied the allegations of dowry harassment, claiming that his father and brother had lived with Singhania only for two days after their wedding and had never threatened her.

In his arguments in the Jaunpur family court, Subhash accused his wife of abusing his parents. He alleged that Singhania’s mother instigated her against her in-laws. Subhash told the court that the plea for alimony be quashed, arguing that Singhania earned Rs 20 lakh annually and that he did not have a stable job.

He also said that the demand for money for maintenance was untenable because Singhania allegedly did not allow Subhash to speak to his son over the phone and prevented him from meeting his son.

In July 2024, the family court in Jaunpur ordered Subhash to pay Rs 40,000 every month for the maintenance of his separated wife and son. The money had to be paid retrospectively from January 2022. In his video and the purported suicide notes, Subhash has accused the judge of the court of demanding a bribe to settle the case in his favour.

‘A genocide of men’

A little before 2 am on December 9 was the last that Save Indian Family Foundation’s Arun Murty heard from Subhash. “Do help my family if possible. Thank you for your kindness so far,” wrote Subhash, who died by suicide that night. Subhash’s last message to Murty included a link to an online folder of documents and the video.

The documents include an alleged suicide note and letters addressed by Subhash to the President of India and judges, in which he lays out the case against his wife.

In these letters and the video, Subhash recounted several of the talking points of the men’s rights movement in India, and echoed a paranoia about women’s empowerment and feminism.

The alleged misuse of laws on marriage and gendered violence is central to men’s rights mobilisation in India – and it appeared to resonate with Subhash. In a letter addressed to the judiciary, Subhash wrote: “Indian women and draconian laws are killing men at a rate 100 times higher than terrorists with the help of Indian courts.”

He added: “It is one of the biggest legal genocide of men” – a claim he reiterated in his video.

In his alleged suicide note, Subhash demanded that “all gender-based laws and institutions should be decommissioned or made as [sic] gender neutral”.

His letters also reflect a view of organisations like the Save Indian Family Foundation that the judiciary unfairly favours women.

In a long section targeting the judiciary, the letter pins the blame on a former chief justice of India, referring to him as a “man-hating”, “gynocentric”, “neo-Marxist hire”. He objected to initiatives taken by the Supreme Court to sensitise judges against the use of sexist language: “A prostitute must be called prostitute. A gold digger should be called a gold digger. A rapist should be called a rapist. A gynocentric man hating judge should not be called a fair judge.”

In a section addressed to his son, he wrote, “I used to think that women’s empowerment is probably good and benign like most educated men. But it is not so. The movement has gone rogue. Some old privileged uncles and aunties [are conspiring to make] husbands slaves in marriages.”

He also appeared to justify violence by men if laws and judgements continue to favour women: “Some men will rightfully take things in their own hands and will become judge, jury and executioner.”

Subhash, according to Murty, was associated with the Save Indian Family Foundation for more than three years. Social media posts of the organisation call feminism “a cancer”, accuse feminists of “male hatred”, and engaging in a “gender war” on men – and even justify violence against women.

“Do doubt [sic], many men suffered from Baazigar syndrome and killed their tormentors,” reads one such post that defends “accidents” by men facing false cases, alluding to a 1993 Hindi revenge drama. “If you have no empathy for victimised men, then you deserve toxic and revengeful men,” it adds.

Anger against gender justice

Murty said Subhash’s death was an example that the misuse of laws and an exaggerated focus on women’s rights could force men to take extreme steps. “It can be worse where men look to take revenge from their wives, we do not support that, but it can very well happen,” Murty told Scroll.

He claimed that feminism was a reactionary movement aimed at breaking the norms of family and religion. “It is driven by the paranoia that patriarchy will come back, but in reality does it even exist?” Murty questioned.

Some of these views are echoed by Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj, a lawyer and filmmaker who regularly highlights the alleged victimisation of men by laws on dowry and domestic violence. “Atul Subhash’s case has once again raised the question whether women want justice or domination and oppression [of their in-laws and husbands],” she said.

Bhardwaj and Murty demand that laws against marital violence be turned gender-neutral. Bhardwaj goes to the extent of demanding that Section 498A be scrapped. It is the “only law in the world” that implicates the entire family of a man merely based on the statement of his wife, she told Scroll.

The sense of victimisation peddled by the organisations is sometimes supported by distorted claims.

“More men die of suicide in dowry cases than women,” said Swarup Sarkar, who set up the Save India Family Foundation, which he described as an “umbrella body for all men’s rights NGOs”, in 2005.

But latest available data from the National Crime Records Bureau for 2022 rebuts Sarkar’s claims. It says that “family problems” accounted for 31.7% of the major causes of suicides among both men and women of which “marriage-related issues” were 4.8%.

“The proportion of female victims were more in ‘marriage-related issues’ (specifically in ‘dowry-related issues’),” states the Accidental Deaths and Suicides report: 213 men as against 1,561 women.

Scholars and activists, however, do not deny a certain degree of misuse of laws to address dowry harassment and domestic violence – either by women or by the police to extort money.

The difficulty for women in securing justice through marriage and divorce laws results in the use of criminal provisions such as Section 498A as “leverage”, scholar Srimati Basu wrote in a 2015 paper on men’s rights activists. This is because, “civil awards of alimony tend to reinforce the economic disadvantage of those with less negotiating power”.

Legal scholars Rehan Abeyratne and Dipika Jain write that the vague language of some of the laws as well as false complaints have helped fuel conservative men’s advocacy with men recasting themselves as a “vulnerable group victimised by domestic violence laws” and led “them to exaggerate the extent of false complaints and harassment”.

The misogyny

Journalist Kalpana Sharma, who has written extensively on violence against women and the campaign against Section 498A, argues that the uproar over Subhash’s death is a sign of deep inequality in Indian society. “[It shows that] many things have changed as far as the status of women in India is concerned but the deep-rooted misogyny in our society about women, about girls has shifted very little,” she said.

Anand Pawar of Pune-based gender justice organisation Samyak said he objected to the demand for “neutral” gender laws. “That these kinds of legislations exist in our country [shows] the differential gender power relation in our society,” he said.

He pointed out that these laws had a long history of struggle, especially by marginalised women, and were passed by Parliament after much consultation and discussion. “[While discrimination against men exists] that is not systemic, that’s not their location in the societal hierarchy,” said Pawar.

Sharma argued that marriage in India continues to be loaded against women. “Dowry is still a reality – whether direct or indirect – and most marriages are arranged,” she said.

The National Crime Records Bureau data for 2022 records 6,450 cases of dowry deaths.

Sharma said: “Even the data that we get is only a sliver of reality, and only when either families or the girl herself is empowered enough to file a case. The justice system that does not serve poor, marginalised women – so that story is unknown.”

She pointed out that few women can take to social media to publicly talk about the violence done to them – as Subhash had done. “They are conditioned not to talk about it,” Sharma said. “And when men do it, they are raised to some other status.”

Experts pointed out that the language of protecting families, which men’s rights organisations use, hides a fear of loss of privilege.

In his workshops sensitising men, Pawar said he found a great deal of male anxiety about the idea of equality. “When they have found that their entitlements – ‘obeying me’, ‘giving me food on time’ – are being challenged or not fulfilled by their partners, men often say they are being tortured,” he said. “Equality is perceived by them as a threat to their power position, their privileges. Though they do not say [this openly], they will name it as ‘Indian culture’, ‘our families will be broken’ and that equality will lead to women ‘demanding’ more.”

Such anxieties are driven by an “illusory” fear of equality. “Most men have not visualised relationships or families based on equal opportunity, equal behaviour and equal distribution of resources,” said Pawar. “Unless those fears are addressed, men just learn the language of equality – they will not change.”