On Friday, an Indian man was reportedly seen walking along the side of the road with his wife’s severed head dangling from his hand in Pune, Maharashtra.

 WARNING: Graphic Image Below 

Ramchandra Sheu Chavan, a security guard in Pune, was reported to the local police when residents of the area saw him walking with a blood soaked axe in one hand and his wife’s head in the other. Upon being taken into police custody, he said he killed her on suspicion of illicit relations with their son-in-law. Chavan shocked bystanders by dangling his wife, 45 year old Sonubai’s head by her hair in one hand.

He has been booked for murder under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code and was reportedly NOT suffering from any mental instability at the time of his arrest.

Source: Indian Express

Above: Ramchandra Sheu Chavan, with the wife he beheaded on Friday, 45 year old Sonubai.

Incidents like this not only show how brutal certain people can be, they also bring to light how a majority of women’s fates and lives, not only in India but South Asia, in general, are at the mercy of the men in their lives who control every action and every aspect of decision making for the women.

For a country like India, which is supposed to be the biggest democracy with one of the world’s fastest growing economies and soon a ‘superpower’, if it gets that permanent UN Security Council seat, such occurrences don’t only shed light at how primitive much of the population still is. It is also very telling of how the government, for all it’s focus on economic progress, has failed to concern itself with the improvement of the lives of its citizens.

Source: Express

Above: 12 year old Aniqa Khalid, who was killed by her father in Lahore, last week, for not making “gol roti“.

This certainly does not mean Pakistan is fairing any better. While India may have countless rape cases and shockingly vile incidents like this, we have acid attacks, fathers killing their daughters on the pretext of ‘preserving their honor’ or just killing them for not knowing how to make a perfect shape of roti. It is shameful for a country to toot their horn about being Islamic when their actions toward their women are more resonant of pre-Islamic jahiliya period of Arabia rather than the respect and equality that women commanded during the times of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH).

Source: Pop Sugar

As a society, such incidents must be taken as an opportunity to make substantive, permanent laws to punish such atrocities against women and ensure such acts are condemned by one and all.