January 22, 2025

What are frequent domestic quarrels leading people to do? A software engineer was stupid enough to upload his wife’s mobile number and other details on an escort site “to teach her a lesson” for frequently fighting with him. The case has come to light in Pune recently. Both husband and wife were software engineers and the wife had complained to the police when she started receiving obscene calls on her mobile. Upon investigation, the police found that the details were uploaded to the escort site from an IP address that was from their own residential address. Further investigation led to the discovery that the husband had done so from his tablet. The husband confessed that since his wife fought with him over trivial matters, he did so to teach her a lesson.

Are some of us becoming so imbecilic that we think nothing before subjecting our own spouses to danger of the worst kind? Despite being educated and a software engineer to boot, did the husband not know that what he was doing was traceable and an offence under the IT Act, 2000 and other marital laws, apart from being socially reprehensible behavior? Did he not know that a resourceful and devious character could trace their home address from the mobile number and subject her to abuse? How are frequent domestic quarrels leading us to behave in such a manner?

There could be hundreds of excuses for people behaving like this but none of them are acceptable. Work pressure is often cited to be the main culprit. When both partners are working, it is expected that the husband will also contribute to chores at home and if there are children, then to dropping them, or picking them up, to and from school and helping out with their homework. He cannot hide behind office work to shirk his parental responsibility as the wife is also an earning member and needs to balance housework with her own job responsibilities. If there are quarrels due to this, or due to other family problems or even suspicion of affairs, the couple needs to talk it out amongst themselves or involve other family members or friends if needed. But to do this kind of thing is a classic example of cutting one’s nose to spite one’s face.