A 25-year-old woman, one of the top five tennis players in Haryana and ranked 113 in ITF women’s doubles with 57 tournaments and 18 gold medals to her name. What could possibly go wrong?

Well—everything.

Because in this country, Indian men refuse to let go of their egos. A father, who once proudly sent his daughter to the best schools and personally dropped her to tennis classes, ended up shooting four bullets into her body—in the kitchen of the very house she called home.

Why?

Because he couldn't bear the weight of people’s comments. Because his daughter had the audacity to become financially stable, to make her own decisions, to be happy—without seeking a man’s validation. That’s all it took for her father to decide she had gone “too far.”

Because in our society, when a woman is too vocal, too confident, or too independent, she’s suddenly seen as characterless. Her dignity becomes questionable simply because she doesn't fit into the neat, submissive mold generations of patriarchy have built for her.

And what do the men in her family do when this “leased property” dares to exercise autonomy?
They tighten their grip.

Because no matter how much you love your pet, you don’t let go of the leash when you take it out for a walk. For Indian women, the situation is even worse. They’re not leashed—they’re like pigeons whose wings have been clipped before they ever learned to fly.

From the moment a daughter is born, she is raised not as an individual, but as someone’s future wife.
“Kanya”—a word that places her on a pedestal as goddess, daughter, wife, mother—yet strips her of one simple identity: that of a human being. One with goals, desires, freedom.

But when a woman doesn’t conform to the ideal image carved by others, she is punished.

Deepak Yadav wants to be hanged for what he calls a heinous crime—“kanya hatya.” You might think it's guilt. But for him, it was duty. Because a real man, in his eyes, keeps the women of his house under control. And when they escape that control, they must be “dealt with.” Since Khap Panchayats are no longer legal, the family becomes the new mini-Panchayat—and honor must be maintained at any cost.

He had to “take action” because people had started calling him names, because they said he was living off his daughter’s income.

Radhika’s friends say she felt suffocated in her own house. Her chats with her coach echo the same pain. But how can a woman possibly feel suffocated in her own home, right? The home built by the very man who once educated her, encouraged her—only to later destroy her?

Every day you’ll see a new viral video—some self-proclaimed guru declaring that women who have relationships before marriage are the reason marriages are failing. They never talk about broken men, about suppressed women, about violence within families.

Patriarchy is so deeply rooted in this country that a woman simply living freely is seen as a threat. Her smile intimidates. Her success enrages. Her independence humiliates.

There are men in this country who live in the 21st century with stone-age mindsets, and that—that is everything that’s wrong with this nation.