Atul Subhash, a 34 year old software engineer from Uttar Pradesh took the extreme step of committing a suicide in his residence in Marathahalli, Bengaluru due to the alleged harassment of his wife and her family. Atul’s wife has charged him with a total of nine cases, including murder attempts and dowry harassment.
Atul Subhash wrote no ordinary suicide note but left behind a 24 page detailed death note where he detailed the harassment he went through due to five particular individuals, including a family court judge Reeta Kaushik and his wife Nikita Singhania, of driving him to despair. Atul also uploaded a 1 hour 21 minutes long video with the caption “This ATM is closed permanently. A legal genocide is happening in India”. In the video Atul Subhash touched upon the events that have occurred in the past few months which compelled him to take the extreme step. He also mentioned leaving behind a gift for his four-year-old son.
The police reported that Subhash sent a WhatsApp message to an NGO group addressing domestic harassment by women, stating his intention to end his life. The group alerted authorities in the morning, but Subhash was already found hanging in his room. He had pasted a paper reading “Justice is Due” on his T-shirt and printed similar messages on the walls of his room.
The deceased had reportedly been battling depression and meticulously planned his suicide over three days. A to-do list titled “Final Task Before Mukti” was found on his cupboard, outlining completed and pending tasks, including details of where to find his death note and keys. In his note titled “What to Be Done Before Dying,” Atul included chilling instructions: Take a bath, Recite Shiva’s name 100 times, Open windows and gate locks, Place car and bike keys on the fridge, Keep the suicide note on the table. Atul outlined his grim options: continue fighting in a biased system, endure more harassment, or end his life to stop funding his adversaries. Choosing the latter as he hoped his death would expose corruption and end the cycle of extortion. In a poignant message to his four-year-old son, Atul wrote:
“Someday, you shall know the real face of your mother and her greedy family. I pray that they don’t devour you and your soul. I often laugh when I remember that I started saving money(inflation adjusted) for a car when you go to college. Silly me.”
“Remember this always that You don’t owe anything to anyone. Don’t trust society. Don’t trust the system. Both society and system wants to feed off of you. If my blood wins in you, you shall live, love and fight with all your heart and craft beautiful things & destroy problems with your mind. May you live a life with the confidence & pride I lived with. May you not turn out to be a socialist or communist leech which is the highest form of corruption i.e, corruption of soul. Goodbye my son!”, Subhash wrote.
He also mentioned his last 12 wishes in the letter.
- All my case hearings should happen live and people of this country should know about my case and learn the terrible state of the legal system and misuse of law these women are doing.
- Please allow this suicide note and videos I have uploaded as my statement and evidence.
- Rita Kaushik is a Judges in Uttar Pradesh. I fear that she might tamper the documents, put pressure on witnesses and can adversely affect other cases. Based on my experience, the Bengaluru courts are relatively more law abiding than UP courts too. I request to run the cases in Karnataka in the interest of Justice and keep her in Judicial and Police Custody in Bengaluru till the trial goes on.
- Give custody of my child to my parents who can raise him with better values.
- Don’t let my wife or her family come near my dead body.
- Don’t do my “Asthi Visarjan” till my harassers get punished. If the court decides that the corrupt judge and my wife and other harassers are not guilty, then pour my ashes into some gutter outside the court.
- Give maximum punishment to my harassers though I don’t trust our legal system too much. If people like my wife are not put behind Jail, they would be more emboldened and will put more false cases on other sons of society in future.
- To wake up the judiciary and urge them to stop harassment of my parents and my brother in false cases.
- There shall be no negotiations, settlements and mediations with these evil people and the culprits must be punished.
- My wife(Knife) should not be allowed to withdraw cases to escape punishment unless she explicitly accepts that she has filed false cases.
- I predict that my wife will now start bringing my child to court to gain sympathy which she didn’t do before to make sure that I can’t meet my child. I request the court to not allow this drama.
- Maybe my old parents should formally ask for euthanasia from the courts if the harassment and extortion continues. Let’s formally kill the parents along with husbands in this country and create a black era in the history of the judiciary. Narratives wont be controlled by the system anymore. Times have changed.
The suicide of Atul Subhash is a stark reminder of the flawed and biased laws the Indian Judicial system has placed for men. It also highlights how fake harassment and dowry cases have become a serious concern for the society. The very laws that were meant to shield women are now many times being misused to extort money or for some kind of personal vested vengeance.
Though Subhash’s case is still in court, his grievances and pleas have been echoed in many similar scenarios. The country will now keep its eyes closely on the future of this case, as men’s basic rights are being challenged by fake feminism, threatening the basic fabric of society. The courts need to step in and make sure that though justice may have been delayed but it does not mean that justice is denied.
