Man Assaults Woman For Refusing Marriage Proposal: Attack Over Consent

This morning, I came across an unsettling video of a 24-year-old man brutally assaulting a 19-year-old woman. The video shows a couple walking together when suddenly the man begins to attack the woman. He slaps her, grabs her hair, slams her head on the ground, and heartlessly kicks her multiple times all over her body. The woman seems to have lost consciousness from the barbaric attack. The man then tried to pull her up on her feet while ordering his friend, who was filming the entire incident, to delete the video. Apparently, he had physically assaulted her for refusing to marry him, owing to her family’s disapproval. The heartbreaking video was shot in the Maunganj area of Rewa.

Later, the locals found her unconscious on the side of the road and informed the police. The police admitted the woman to the hospital and registered a case against her perpetrators. The accused has been identified as Pankaj Tripathi, and the man who shot the video was his friend. After days of being on the run, Pankaj was arrested on Sunday in Mirzapur, Uttar Pradesh.

He has been detained under IPC 323 (voluntarily causing harm) and other relevant sections. The victim has also filed a complaint against the man who shot and distributed the video. A case under the Information Technology (IT) Act has been booked against him. Now both men are being interrogated by the police while in custody.

Under the instruction of Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the Madhya Pradesh government demolished the house of the accused. As he is a driver by profession, his licence has also been cancelled.

Man assaults woman for refusing to marry him: When are men going to start taking "no" for an answer?

This question is something that I have been thinking about a lot. men who simply cannot take it when a woman breaks up with them. Men who can't accept when their wife or girlfriend refuses to do something for them. Men who can't stop pursuing (read: stalking) a woman who has expressed disinterest in them. Why can’t these men just take "no" for an answer? Why do they have to take "no" as a lash on their ego and get offended? Why do they have to resort to violence when women say "no"?

Social conditioning

Right from childhood, men are raised to be superior to women. They are given more power and a voice everywhere. Masculinity is often imparted to them as dominance over women. Women have been regarded as property since antiquity. Kanyadaan's prevalence in today's society demonstrates this. So, when a woman tries to break up with a man, the man, who just sees her as his property, attacks her out of jealousy and insecurity.

Patriarchal upbringing

Young boys who witness gender disparity and male dominance at home grow up to become misogynistic men. Girls are raised to be tolerant, submissive, and accepting of what they are given, so even girls are often hesitant to say "no." Boys, however, are almost never denied anything. In many families, men’s needs are prioritised over women's. And that is the root cause of the problem.

Misleading messages from movies

Many movies follow the narrative that a woman's "no" means "yes." She expects you to try harder. And in most films, the heroine initially hates the hero, but after a lot of stalking, love-bombing, and even aggression, she falls in love with him. All of this has been glorified and normalised as love. When an average male audience internalises this concept, they believe that they too can make any woman fall in love with them by mirroring the hero’s toxic behaviour. They fail to realise that it is all scripted and won’t happen in real life. So when women reject their proposal in real life or say "no" to them, men just don’t know how to handle it. They get offended and resort to violence.

All these factors explain why men assault, kidnap, harass, abuse, blackmail, stalk, threaten, drug, or even murder women who say "no" to them. These men fall in love with women or ask something of them with the intention of receiving a "yes" as an answer. So it’s more of a demand than an ask. They have already made up their minds, so the probability of getting "no" as a reply isn’t even considered. Society and families have failed to teach men to be respectful of women’s boundaries and autonomy. With a 64.5 percent crime rate against women in our country, shouldn’t we change the scenario at home first? And that will eventually create a change in society.

Views expressed by the author are their own