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The Madras High Court on Monday emphasised that courts must not have misplaced sympathies for spurned lovers who resort to violence. This was reflected in an order passed by Justice N Anand Venkatesh while rejecting a bail application filed by a man who had stabbed his lover multiple times after she refused to marry him.
As observed in his order,
“Incidents of this nature are continuing to happen on a daily basis and it has reached monstrous proportions where man seem to think that the girl has to concede to their request for love/ marriage and on refusal to do so, they take the extreme step of brutally attacking girls and had also gone to the extent of setting them to fire.
This trend is on the rise and it is high time that Courts put down their foot and bring some sanity in the society. These incidents continue to happen because man thinks that a woman is a chattel and she has to concede to whatever a man demands. This attitude has to be changed and no man has any right to compel any girl to fall in love with him or to marry him.“
In this case, it was informed that the girl had suffered four stab incisions on her face, multiple stab injuries on the chest and abdomen, as well as stab injuries on her neck, arms and lower limbs. The Additional Public Prosecutor told the Madras High Court that she was in the hospital for nearly seven days owing to the injuries. The Court observed that,
“It is a miracle that this victim girl has survived this attack due to the effective treatment that has been given by the hospital. After this attack, this injured girl can never come back to normalcy and this incident is going to remain deep in the mind of the victim girl till the end of her life.”
The grave nature of the offence led the Court to emphatically conclude that the petitioner could not be granted bail in the matter. The judge proceeded to highlight that courts ought not treat such offenders leniently. As noted in his order,
“Obviously, the present case falls within the ambit of a case with serious accusations and very serious gravity of offence.
The Courts must stop being merciful or tend to have misplaced sympathies in cases of this nature. If the accused person had committed the crime, since he is wounded by the conduct of the girl who had suddenly refused to marry him, that does not give him a right to resort to stabbing a woman.
There are other ways to deal with the situation. It will be better if the petitioner is kept inside the Jail and Jail authorities start giving this petitioner counselling by experts and bring him to normalcy before he is released from the Jail. Probably, by the time the petitioner gets out of the Jail, he will regret for what he did to the girl with whom he had a love affair.”
The Court, therefore, directed that the petitioner be made to undergo psychiatric counselling in prison.
“Considering the gravity of the accusation, this Court is not inclined to grant bail to the petitioner at this stage and the Superintendent of Prisons is directed to immediately arrange for counselling of this petitioner with a Psychiatrist.”