The Wire

I thought I’m inured to shock and horror, but this story made even me gasp:

In a hair-raising incident, a husband stitched the private parts of his wife with wire in Jharkhand’s Dhanbad city after her request to visit her parents enraged him, police said Friday.

[…]

Munda became angry when Sabitri said Wednesday that she wanted to go to her parents’ home and charged her with having an extra-marital relationship, Dhanbad Deputy Superintendent of Police Rajiv Ranjan said.

Their quarrel took a vicious turn when Munda tied his 21-year-old wife’s hands and legs and stitched her private parts with “iron wire”, Ranjan said. After committing the ghastly act, he locked her up in a room.

From one point of view, this guy is an outlier, a complete freak show, a madman.

From another, he’s the typical Indian male. He treats his wife as his property, and is sexually insecure. The manifestation of that is unusual—but the sentiment, alas, all too common.

Such it goes.