“It’s been eight years; I cannot take daily beatings now,” the mother of two daughters — aged 4 and 2 — says repeatedly, crying. Speaking in Punjabi, she accuses her husband and in-laws of “forcing” her to die by suicide.
“Daddy, I am going to die, please forgive me.”
30-year-old Mandeep Kaur, who was from UP’s Bijnor, was married to Ranjodhbeer Singh Sandhu in 2015 and moved to the US. Her family in Bijnor today said they, too, had hoped the abuse would end someday. Now they have sought the government’s help to bring her body to India.
Several videos of the husband apparently abusing her have gone viral, including one in which the daughters are heard screaming and crying. In another, recorded in a security camera inside the house, she tries to stand up for herself — “I refuse to take it anymore” — but he beats her until she gasps out an apology.
The videos are believed to have been sent to friends.
In the video detailing the abuse, she speaks about her family having reacted after he “held me captive in a truck for five days.”
“My father filed a police case against him. But he pleaded and asked me to save him… and I did.” She also alleges extramarital affairs, saying that his family “did not say anything… in turn enabling the violence.”
There was no information yet about any legal action against the husband or his family in India or the US.
The video was shared on Instagram by The Kaur Movement, an organisation that works for sexual and domestic abuse victims, focusing on the Sikh community. Clips were shared on Twitter on Facebook, too, by several people, who commented on “family and social structure”.
Among angry reactions, larger questions being raised online and offline.
Protesters demanding justice gathered outside her home in New York’s Richmond Hill. Some activists from Punjab went and met her family in Bijnor too.
On Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, people from several countries — Sikh and Punjabi diaspora, in particular — used the hashtag #JusticeForMandeep. Many posts said society had failed her. Some people, in turn, put out videos slamming those “making it bigger than it is”.
UK-based NGO Sikh Women’s Aid, which also works against abuse within the Sikh and Punjabi communities, issued a statement expressing grief:
“She describes a life of abuse, belittling and violence.”
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