Top Indian businesswoman 'driven to suicide by caste prejudice of in-laws'

 
Filed complaint: Akanksha Rathi said in-laws were hostile because of her origins
Mark Wilkinson31 October 2012

A leading Indian businesswoman hanged herself because her in-laws could never accept her low-caste caste and had “mentally tortured” her, it was claimed today.

Akanksha Rathi, 32, was found hanged in her New Delhi home last week, a month after her 34-year-old husband Anirudh died of a heart attack.

Days before Mrs Rathi had filed what is known in India as a “dowry harassment” complaint against her in-laws.

She told police they had never been able to overcome her humble origins and were trying to stop her claiming her husband’s share of the family steel empire.

Mrs Rathi’s family claimed they had found a draft message on her phone which read: “Maa (mother) I am killing myself because these people don’t keep me properly.” Her mother Anita Singh said: “Since the message was saved with my name in the sender’s column, we assume that she wanted to send that message to me, but it was never delivered.”

Mrs Rathi’s in-laws had allegedly opposed her “love marriage” to their son. She claimed that the family waged a campaign of harassment against her in the weeks after his death and had confiscated her property.

Mrs Rathi and her husband ran one of India’s most successful steel plants in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. A police spokesman there said: “Mrs Rathi had filed a dowry harassment complaint against her in-laws earlier this month. She had accused them of mentally torturing her.

“We had sent a team to Delhi to arrest the accused named in the complaint but they have acquired anticipatory bail. We will be following the legal procedure.” Women’s rights campaigners said her death highlighted the “sad reality” for many women in India, that career accomplishments or physical beauty cannot overcome caste prejudice.

Mrs Rathi was well-known in the male-dominated steel industry in India and had won the Asia Pacific Entrepreneurship Award in 2009. Delhi police claimed she had been undergoing treatment for depression for the past three years. “Her father told us that she was depressed and had come to Delhi after her husband’s death,” an officer said.

Police are treating her death as suicide but said they would probe other angles until they receive the postmortem report.

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