SHIVANI SINGH

A plumber beats up his wife for 12 hours before beheading her with a saw. A gory crime of this nature is not reported every day, but it could have happened anywhere in India.

In a village, where communities are close knit, such an ordeal would require a degree of passive complicity. In a metro such as Delhi, the prolonged torture culminated into beheading because nobody bothered to intervene.

The scene of the crime, Madhu Vihar, is an informal settlement in east Delhi where houses are so tightly packed it is difficult to maintain privacy. So, on February 10, when Subodh Kumar beat up his wife all night long, her repeated calls for help reached many.

Describing the fights as an everyday affair, a neighbour told HT that he knocked on their door and asked them to “keep it low”. Kumar told him not to interfere in his “private matter”. The neighbour called up his landlord and that was that.

Confident that nobody was watching, Kumar diabolically planned to cut his wife’s body into pieces over the next two days. His crime came to light only when he confessed to a friend.

Not all cases of domestic violence have a murderous end. But the perpetrators are always confident about being in total control behind the closed doors of their home. Our insular urban life, where many don’t even know their neighbours, fuels that confidence.