A 28-year-old woman has registered a complaint against her in-laws and husband alleging that she was forced to marry the latter, as he threatened to make her obscene video viral if she resisted.
The victim Shreya Dubey (name change), who is also the complainant, a resident of Mulund met her husband, Ajay Verma (name changed) during a community event. His family approached the victim’s family for a marriage proposal, but the latter refused the offer. Later Ajay approached Shreya personally by calling her and asking her to marry him. When she refused again, he said, “If you don’t agree to marry me, there will be bad consequences” to her. By allegedly threatening to harm her and her family members, Ajay forced her to pose nude during video calls which he recorded, without her consent.
Later, Ajay once again approached Shreya’s family members for marriage, and this time he showed them the videos he shot and threatened to make it viral if they refused the marriage proposal, Shreya said this to the cops.
'Father gave in-laws dowry'
“My parents got scared and said yes to the marriage. We got married in Feb 2023 in a community hall located in Gujarat and after marriage, I moved to my in-law’s house in Virar. A day before our marriage, as demanded by my husband’s family, he gave them a dowry consisting of gold ornaments and other items worth Rs 242 lakhs,” she said, adding that after their marriage, at every given point, he kept threatening to upload the videos on social media if she did anything that he didn’t like.
She further alleged that she was never allowed to leave their house. “I was not allowed to meet my mother, or go to my house, or even meet my sister. And if I did, my husband would physically abuse me, and even my brother-in-law would pick fights with me for no reason. He took me to Goa and there after getting drunk, he beat me up black and blue for talking to my parents,” she added.
Allegations of marital rape
The victim also complained about marital rape in her statement to the police. She said, “With all this physical and mental abuse, every night he would rape me despite my physical condition being bad, and requesting him not to.”
However, no sections of rape have been added to the FIR as there are no criminal penalties for marital rape in India when a wife is over 18 years of age. The other sections that are included in the FIR are 498-A (cruelty by husband or relatives of husband), 323 (voluntarily causing hurt), 406 (criminal breach of trust), and 506 (criminal intimidation), among others of the Indian Penal Code and section 66(e) (intentionally, knowingly captures, publishes or transmits an image of a private area of any person without consent) of the Information Technology Act.
The Mulund police have initiated a probe into the matter.
