A woman dies, and men rush to defend themselves, question the legitimacy of her suffering, or change the subject entirely. As women grieve publicly, conversations are derailed by “not all men”, false equivalences, and competitive victimhood. And frankly, women are exhausted from mourning alone while empathy is turned into a debate.
Twisha Sharma was 33 years old. She had been married for five months.
On 12 May, she was found dead in her matrimonial home in Bhopal. Her family says she was mentally tortured, harassed for dowry, and driven to her death by her husband, a lawyer and her mother-in-law, a retired district judge. The husband went into hiding. The autopsy had "irregularities." CCTV footage was allegedly tampered with. It took the mother-in-law's audacious self-organised press conference and the nationwide outrage it triggered for authorities to finally examine the discrepancies.
Five days later, Deepika Nagar was gone. She was 24. Her family had spent nearly a crore on the wedding. It wasn't enough. Her in-laws wanted an SUV and another Rs 45-50 lakh. On the night she died, her father had been at the house just hours earlier, trying to resolve the demands. After midnight, he got a call saying she had "fallen from the roof." Her autopsy said otherwise: brain hematoma, ruptured spleen, bleeding in the liver and kidney, bruises across her face, arms, chest, abdomen.
Before both of them was Nikki Bhati, 28, who in August 2025 told her husband she wanted to reopen her beauty parlour with her sister. He said it wasn't "allowed." Two hours later, she was on fire. Doused in flammable liquid, filmed staggering down a staircase in flames while her six-year-old son watched. Her family had already given a Scorpio, a motorcycle, gold. It wasn't enough. It never is.