Srinagar: While the world celebrated International Women’s Day, a helpless woman attempted suicide Thursday after her husband abandoned her on a highway in Kashmir.
Without giving her any idea about where she was, the husband literally threw her out of a truck on the Srinagar-Leh highway at Wussan village in north Kashmir’s Ganderbal district.
The husband, a truck driver, had brought her to Ganderbal from Baramulla district nearly 110 kilometres away from his home.
The story of Tahmina (name changed) is an eye-opener for all who celebrate International Women’s Day and the rights “granted” to women in a male-dominated World. Tahmina had been brought to the Valley from Kanpur some three years back after her uncle arranged her marriage with a local driver who lives in north Kashmir’s Baramulla district. This was after receiving a heft sum of money from the groom.
The uncle vanished and the 35-year-old woman was left to the mercy of her husband.
“He brought me here in his truck and dropped me down. Without looking back, he drove back to his home. I want to die because I have nowhere to go,” Tahmina told the locals who had reached in time to save her as she tried to hang herself from a tree.
All she owns now are the clothes she is wearing and a small bag.
The bag also contains her Nikahnama.
“The cruel husband has placed a divorce paper in the woman’s bag which she showed to us,” said a local in Wussan village.
Police in now investigating the case. “Her husband will be questioned. We are trying to establish the facts,” they said.
Given the disclosures by some locals, Tahmina might not be the first nor the last such non-local woman to face the tragedy.
“Women with relatively poorer backgrounds from outside the state are being ‘sold’ by their relatives to locals. While some are living happily with their husbands, the less fortunate ones like Tahmina are abandoned after the husband loses interest in the wife. It is as simple as that,” said a local Imam who did not want to be named. (IANS)