When love turns deadly

She wasn’t married. She was a 22-year-old nursing student named Sofia Parveen, who was allegedly pushed from a third-floor balcony in Patna by a man she trusted, her live-in partner. Reports say he had lied about his identity, posing as a police officer. They had rented a flat together, and had presented themselves to the landlord as husband and wife. CCTV footage reportedly captured her body crashing through a boundary wall after being flung. She was found broken on the ground. The accused allegedly fled soon after. The story, like so many before it, should have shocked us into outrage. Instead, it confirmed what many women in India already know — that love, which should be the safest space, is often the most dangerous.

Every year, thousands of Indian women are beaten, maimed, and killed not by strangers, but by the men who claim to love them. The home — that supposed sanctuary of affection — becomes a crime scene. The word romance itself, once a promise of tenderness, has become a trapdoor. Because in our country, a woman’s greatest vulnerability is intimacy. The closer a man gets, the less safe she becomes.

We tell our daughters to stay away from strangers, but we forget to warn them about the lovers, husbands, and boyfriends who turn violent. We make them believe that love is meant to hurt, that silence is maturity, that endurance is strength. We raise them to believe that staying is noble, that leaving is shameful. The cultural messaging begins early — the movies that glorify obsession as devotion, the myths that equate sacrifice with virtue, the elders who say shaadi nibhaani padti hai. We don’t teach girls how to choose love; we teach them how to survive it.

Sofia wasn’t a wife, but she lived under the same patriarchal shadow as millions of married women. She was isolated from her family, emotionally cornered, and deceived by a man who believed he could own her. That belief — of ownership — is at the heart of gender violence in India. It is why, despite laws like the Protection of Women from Domestic Violence Act, 2005, women continue to die at home. The law promises protection, but what protection can exist in a society that refuses to acknowledge the problem?

Domestic violence isn’t confined to marriage — it thrives in dating, in live-in relationships, in WhatsApp romances that turn coercive, in families that still blame women for being “too trusting”. When love becomes control, when affection turns into surveillance, when jealousy becomes justification — that’s violence, too. It doesn’t always leave bruises. Sometimes it’s in the silence, in the constant fear, in the isolation that feels like care.

As a woman who has lived through abuse, I know that violence doesn’t begin with a slap. It begins with a look. A tone. A withdrawal of warmth. It begins the moment a man decides your boundaries are optional. And it ends — sometimes fatally — when you start believing him.

India loves to call itself modern, but we’re still medieval when it comes to gendered safety. A woman’s freedom is conditional, her choices policed, her suffering normalised. When she’s attacked by a stranger, she becomes a national symbol. When she’s attacked by someone she loves, she becomes an inconvenience. We lower our eyes. We change the subject. We say, ghar ke maamle mein kya bolna.

Every October, during Domestic Violence Awareness Month, we light candles and hold placards. But awareness without accountability is performative compassion. We must stop treating domestic violence as a women’s issue and start seeing it as a national failure — of education, of empathy, of enforcement. We need police who respond, not dismiss. Judges who prioritise safety over reconciliation. Shelter homes that aren’t prisons. Mental health support that’s affordable. And families who believe their daughters before their sons and sons-in-law.

But the change must start before all that — with how we define love. We must raise sons who see equality as intimacy. We must raise daughters who see fear as a warning, not a duty. We must tell them that love should make you larger, not smaller. That no relationship is worth dying for. That safety isn’t negotiable.

Sofia’s death is not just one more story of violence — it is a mirror reflecting the cultural rot we’ve normalised. She wasn’t killed because she loved the wrong man. She was killed because that man lived in a country that still teaches men that power is love, and women that love is endurance.

She didn’t fall from that balcony — she was pushed, by him, by patriarchy, by our collective silence.

So this October, don’t light a candle. Don’t post a hashtag. If you want to honour Sofia, start by unlearning the lies we tell our daughters about love. Because until we make relationships safe, no woman — married or not — will ever be free.

If you or someone you know is experiencing abuse, this can be of help:

National Helpline for Women: 1091

All India Women Helpline: 181

NCW WhatsApp Helpline: 7827170170

Because awareness means nothing if it doesn’t save a life.

— The writer is an acclaimed author