Bengaluru:

The 34-year-old techie who died by suicide at his home in Bengaluru had been planning his death for months and had prepared a detailed checklist of everything he needed to do in the days leading up to it, ticking off every task once it was done. A printout of the checklist was pasted on the wall of his Bengaluru home, right next to another printed paper with the words ‘Justice is due’. 

Atul Subhash, who hanged himself on Monday, left behind a 24-page suicide note and recorded a nearly 90-minute long video in which he alleges that his wife and her relatives had filed a slew of false cases against him and his family and were trying to get him to pay Rs 2 lakh a month as maintenance for her and the couple’s four-year-old son. Subhash, who is originally from Bihar, also levelled allegations against a judge in Uttar Pradesh’s Jaunpur, where his in-laws live and some of his cases were being heard, claiming that she had demanded Rs 5 lakh from him to settle them. He also wrote a letter to the President, criticising the criminal justice system and highlighting a rising trend of false cases being filed against men by their estranged wives. 

The checklist prepared by Subhash was divided into three parts – ‘Before last day’, ‘Last day’ and ‘Execute last moment’ – and included items like removing his phone fingerprint and face recognition, presumably so that it could be accessed by others after he was dead; leaving his car, bike and room keys on the fridge; and completing all his office work and submitting his office laptop and charger.

While the list has a column for ticking off the tasks in the ‘Last day’ and ‘Execute last moment’ sections, it has ‘Done’ printed against the items in the ‘Before last day’ section, indicating that these had already been completed before the list was printed out. These included securing his finances, finishing office tasks and legal preparations, compiling all communications, and backing up data and “creating redundancies”.

In the ‘Last day’ section, the techie, who works in Artificial Intelligence according to his suicide note, had another task related to creating a local data backup as a redundancy. The other items included removing the fingerprint from his phone, uploading his scanned suicide note, clearing all payments, uploading his video suicide note and submitting his laptop, charger and ID card at his office. 

On the top of the list on his ‘Execute Last Moment’ section was having a bath, followed by keeping his car, bike and room keys on the fridge and the suicide note on the table. The focus on the car keys was also evident from the police complaint filed by Subhash’s brother, Bikas Kumar, who said the techie had sent him several messages saying goodbye and sharing the Google Maps location of his car. The other items on the list included sending messages to his lawyers and family and sending mails to the High Court and Supreme Court – after checking attachments – in which he had complained about the judge assigned to his case, who allegedly took bribes. 

‘Took Months’

The fact that this list was carefully planned was also reflected in Subhash’s suicide note, in which he mentions that it took him months to ensure that all his “pending responsibilities” were completed. 

“It took me a few months to make sure that I complete my pending responsibilities I had towards my family and finish my work commitments etc. Also a lot of government office work is slow, that also led to this delay in suicide. I hope this delay will not go against me and will not help harassers and extorters of me and my family,” the techie wrote.  

“The more | work hard and become better at my work, the more l and my family will be harassed and extorted and the whole legal system will encourage and help my harassers… Now, with me gone, there won’t be any money and there won’t be any reason to harass my old parents and my brother. I may have destroyed my body but it has saved everything I believe in,” he said in another part of the note. 

Instigation?

In his suicide note, Subhash said his wife and her family’s cases against him included one under the Dowry Prohibition Act and others pertaining to sections like cruelty against a woman. He said when he had pointed out to the judge at one point that men are dying by suicide because of false cases, his wife had asked him why he wasn’t doing so. He claimed the judge had also laughed at this while ordering his wife to leave the room and then his mother-in-law had asked why he had not died by suicide yet. 

Subhash said when he had asked his mother-in-law how she and her daughter would get money when he was gone, she said she would get it from his parents and ensure that his family kept doing the rounds of courts for life. 

“It seems that Devi Saraswati herself made my mother in law disclose her plans and the solution of all the problems too. This incident along with instigation to commit suicide from my wife and the face of the laughing judge mocking my helplessness has rendered my faith in legal system destroyed and has prompted my action of committing suicide (sic),” he wrote.

The police have registered an abutment of suicide case against Subhash’s wife and some members of his family, according to news agency PTI. 

Marseille, France:

Walking into court each day with her head held high, the ex-wife of a Frenchman on trial for orchestrating her mass rape in her own bed for almost a decade has become a feminist icon.

With her now trademark auburn bob and dark glasses, 71-year-old Gisele Pelicot has become a figurehead in the battle against the use of drugs to commit sexual abuse.

Her life was shattered in 2020 when she discovered that her partner of five decades had for years been secretly administering her large doses of tranquilisers to rape her and invite dozens of strangers to join him.

But she has decided not to hide and demanded the trial of Dominique Pelicot, 71, and 50 co-defendants since September 2 be open to the public because, as she has said through one of her lawyers, it should be up to her alleged abusers – not her – to be ashamed.

“It’s a way of saying… shame must change sides,” her attorney Stephane Babonneau said as the trial opened.

Since then, feminist activists have used her stylised portrait by Belgian artist Aline Dessine, daubed with the words “Shame is changing sides”, to show support and call for protests.

The artist with 2.5 million followers on TikTok has given up all rights to the image.

‘VERY BRAVE’

Outside the courtroom in the southern town of Avignon on Friday, protester Nadege Peneau said she was full of admiration for the trial’s main plaintiff.

“What she’s doing is very brave,” she said.

“She’s speaking up for so many children and women, and even men” who have been abused, she added.

Gisele Pelicot in August obtained a divorce from her husband, who has confessed to the abuse after meticulously documenting it with photos and videos.

She has moved away from the southern town of Mazan where, in her own words, for years he treated her like “a piece of meat” or a “rag doll”.

She now uses her maiden name, but during the trial has asked the media to use her former name as a married woman.

Her lawyer Antoine Camus said she had transformed from a devoted wife and retiree, who loved walks and choir singing, into a woman in the seventies ready for a battle.

“I will have to fight till the end,” she told the press on September 5, in her only public statement outside court in the first days of the four-month trial.

“Obviously it’s not an easy exercise and I can feel attempts to trap me with certain questions,” she added calmly.

‘NOT IN VAIN’

The daughter of a member of the military, Gisele Pelicot was born on December 7, 1952 in Germany, returning to France with her family when she was five.

When she was only nine, her mother, aged just 35, died of cancer.

“In my head, I was already 15, I was already a little woman,” she said, describing growing up “without much love”.

Her older brother Michel died of a heart attack aged 43, before her 20th birthday.

She has said she was never one to publicly show emotions.

“In the family, we hide tears and we share laughter,” one of her lawyers had reported her as saying.

She met Dominique Pelicot, her future husband and rapist, in 1971.

She had dreamt of becoming a hairdresser but instead studied to be a typist. After a few years temping, she joined France’s national electricity company EDF, ending her career in a logistics service for its nuclear power plants.

At home, she looked after her three children, then seven grandchildren, and did a little gymnastics.

Only when the police caught her husband filming up women’s skirts in a supermarket in 2020 did she find out the true reason behind her troubling memory lapses.

Camus, her lawyer, said his client “never wanted to be a role model”.

“She just wants all this not to be in vain,” he said.
 

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)