How we talk about Twisha Sharma says a lot about what’s wrong with us

The conversation around the young woman who died within the first six months of her marriage reveals something uncomfortable: When a woman dies within marriage, society often searches her life for deviations before it examines the possibility of violence

The death of Twisha Sharma within the first six months of her marriage at her marital home has understandably drawn intense public attention. A young woman’s unnatural death within months of marriage is a matter of public concern, particularly in a country where domestic abuse, physical as well as emotional, continues to be normalised, minimised, or explained away as a lack of patience or inability to adapt.

CCTV footage, alleged WhatsApp chats, statements from her family and friends, and the responses of those accused are all now in the public domain. The delayed FIR, the anticipatory bail proceedings, and the conduct of the investigation and judicial process may each be observed and interpreted differently depending on the context and individual understanding.

What has unsettled me, however, as a women’s rights advocate, a law enforcement officer, and a woman, is not the existence of these competing accounts, but the language and moral framework emerging from some of them, particularly from Giribala Singh, a retired judicial officer.

In public remarks, references were casually made to Twisha’s lifestyle, mental health, professional capability, association with the beauty industry, reproductive decisions, age at marriage, and alleged substance abuse. The cumulative effect was disturbing, almost a character post-mortem of the victim conducted on live television before a national audience. Yet, this is often how society responds when women die within marriage: The woman herself quietly becomes the subject of scrutiny.

Many of the allegations appear to be based on what she says she was told by her son, suggesting that what Twisha may have shared within her marriage was being further dissected and analysed within the family. This raises a broader concern about the erosion of privacy within marriage, where a woman leaves the familiarity of her parental home and enters a new household that often does not treat her as an equal partner, but as someone to be observed and assessed, who is required to adjust to fit within predefined expectations.

The repeated references to Twisha’s lifestyle are revealing. The mother-in-law’s statements drifted towards how she lived before marriage, the choices she made, her personality, her independence, and the kind of woman she supposedly was. Yet none of these questions answers the central legal issue: Whether she faced cruelty, coercion, humiliation, or circumstances that contributed to her death.

The references to pregnancy are equally troubling. Deeply personal reproductive experiences have been drawn into public discourse in ways that seem less aimed at understanding and more at moral positioning. In India, a woman’s relationship with motherhood is still treated as a measure of her emotional legitimacy. Any deviation from expected notions of femininity is too quickly transformed into commentary on character.

Then comes the familiar invocation of mental health. Mental health struggles are real, serious, and deserving of compassion. But in marital disputes and suspicious deaths involving women, references to a woman being unstable, depressed, manic or emotionally difficult often acquire another function: They subtly redirect public sympathy and dilute scrutiny of the environment surrounding her.

There is also an unmistakable ageism embedded in these narratives. Women who marry later are frequently portrayed as less adaptable, too independent, too opinionated, too accustomed to autonomy. The implication is clear: A woman entering marriage with an established sense of self is somehow harder to accommodate. What is presented as incompatibility often masks an expectation of submission.

And finally, there is the emotional framing that asks the public to look at a grieving mother and her son’s suffering. One can empathise with that grief without losing sight of another reality: Indian society has historically found it easier to humanise sons than daughters-in-law. The pain of a family defending its son becomes immediately visible and relatable; the suffering of a woman often remains conditional upon whether she can first be proven ideal.

This is precisely why the language used in such cases matters. When a retired judicial officer speaks in ways that invoke stereotypes around modern women, emotional instability, reproductive choices, or lifestyle, it does more than defend a family. It reflects the deeply embedded assumptions and language of a woman who herself is supposed to be a shining example of women’s empowerment.

Twisha Sharma’s death is under investigation, and the truth must emerge through due process, not public sentiment. But the discourse surrounding her already reveals something uncomfortable: When a woman dies within marriage, society often searches her life for deviations before it examines the possibility of violence. That instinct deserves scrutiny, too.

The writer is currently SP of Kanpur Dehat