A deadly cocktail of dowry demands and a desire for a male child snuffed out Swati Jamdade's life
When Sunil Jadhav, 50, came to Miraj Court on Tuesday, it was with the resolve that his complaint against his son-in-law Praveen Jamdade could go a long way in saving the lives of several other young women. Only days earlier, his eldest daughter Swati, all of 26, had died of a botched medical termination of pregnancy (MTP) she had been forced to undergo by her husband of seven years.
It had taken her death to blow the lid off a female foeticide racket that operated out a so-called hospital run by a homeopathic doctor couple.
The abuse, recalls Jadhav, started almost immediately after the 2010 wedding. "Our daughter was being harassed by the family almost immediately after the marriage," recalls Swati's mother Vijaya, 45. A mother to three daughters and a son, Vijaya was allowed to meet her daughter for just a day every year. Swati was not allowed to speak to her family members over the phone, and wasn't even allowed to meet her only brother, who also lives in Sangli, for Rakshabandhan.
"Only if my husband brought gold on his yearly visit to Sangli was he allowed to meet our daughter. Or else we were insulted and sent back," she told DNA.
"We had given cash as well as 15 tolas (150 grammes) of gold during the wedding. We gave double of what they demanded" said Jadhav, struggling to understand why his first-born had to meet such a horrific fate.
Verbal abuse was a constant in Swati's life. Two years earlier, her parents even threatened their son-in-law that they would report him to the police but Jamdade assured them that he would mend his ways. The parents never considered getting her back for good.
With two daughters – Swaranjali, 3, and Pranjali, 1 – Swati was under tremendous pressure to produce a male heir, and when an sonograph report revealed that she was carrying a third girl child, all hell broke loose. Incidentally, sex determination of a foetus is illegal in India.
"Our son-in-law called to inform us about his decision to abort the child which we vehemently opposed," says Vijaya.
On March 1, Jamdade informed them that their daughter had suffered an attack. It was only when they reached Sangli from Cuddalore, where Jadhav runs a small gold and silver smelting unit, a day later that they realised their daughter was dead, victim to the insatiable desire for sons in a country that already has one of the worst gender rations in the world.
The distraught father immediately filed a complaint with the police and the post mortem report confirmed that Swati had died of a haemorrhage following a botched MTP carried out by homeopath Babasaheb Khidrapure.
Jamdade has been booked for culpable homicide not amounting to murder and will be in police custody till March 17 while police carry out investigations.
"Whether we have a son or a daughter is our destiny. You don't behave this way," says Jadhav, who is now determined that his daughter should get justice, at least in death.
To drive that point home, "We burnt her pyre right in front of her husband's home so that they see what they did to our daughter," Vijaya said. And in defiance of tradition, which says women can't attend cremations and that final rites must only be conducted by a male, Swati's 3-year-old daughter Swaranjali lit her mother's pyre, as police officials looked on.
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