Hyderabad: What can be termed as an anti-social, evil practice, yet another dowry harassment case has come forward by none other than a retired high court Judge’s family.
A quite disturbing video footage of a woman being manhandled inside her home, dragged off the bed while her child a toddler who can barely walk tries to protect her has surfaced on the internet, NDTV reports.
According to sources, 30-year-old Sindhu Sharma is married to Nooty Vashisht- son of the then Judge Nooty Ram Mohan Rao. In the video footage that has only emerged now shows Sindhu’s husband, her father-in-law and her mother-in-law Nooty Durga Jayalakshmi manhandling her inside their residence.
The victim has now filed a case of domestic violence and harassment for dowry against the in-laws, naming her in-laws as perpetrators subjecting her to cruelty and torture.
The incident came to light in the month of April soon after Ms Sharma was admitted to Apollo Hospital.
Following the incident in April, Ms Sharma sought her two children’s custody aged 4 and 2, both girls. The younger was still breastfeeding at the time of incident.
Back then the High court had to intervene to force the in-laws to hand over the elder daughter as well to the mother.
Both of them were witness to the assaults on their mother and are seen in the CCTV footage. “They did not want to give the elder daughter as they were worried she would tell what was going on with me,” Ms Sharma said.
“I had told the police to examine the DVR (Digital Video Recorder). I remembered the ID and password and accessed this footage,” Ms Sharma said.
She and her family had not made the CCTV footage public so far reportedly in hopes of a settlement.
“I have two young daughters. Don’t they need the father’s love too?” said Ms Sharma recalling her life turned upside down shortly after her marriage in 2012.
She alleged her mother-in-law would humiliate her and subject her to physical and mental torture.
On the other hand, the Mr Nooty Ramamohana Rao who has served at the Hyderabad and Madras High Courts has countered Ms Sharma’s statement and said on the night of the incident, Ms Sharma had attempted to kill herself – the second such attempt in six weeks the reason behind pulling and restraining her.
Sources close to the family said Ms Sharma deliberately screamed for help worrying the family members since she was hiding a bottle of pesticide or poison in her dress.
The family members dreaded she would harm herself as well the two minor kids as she had attempted on March 8, said the source.
“She has made serious allegations of dowry harassment and cruelty. Is there a single proof of it or of torture? She made unreasonable demands and wanted us to divide our property and hand it over to her. If things were so bad, why does she still want to live with my son? If we go public and say how she behaved and everything she did, it just becomes it just becomes an ugly media trial,” the sources said.