The blue drum murder: Memes hiding a dark reality

India Today

A gruesome crime turned viral meme — but behind the jokes lies a disturbing pattern of intimate partner violence. Let's look beyond the punchline with Manish Adhikary on First Things Fast.

Transcript

00:00In India, the blue drum is very famous, it's very viral, many husbands are in shock because of the blue drum.

00:08By the grace of God, we haven't got married yet.

00:11The blue drum, once just a household item, now a symbol of something far darker.

00:17The murder of 29-year-old Sourav Rajput in Meerut changed everything.

00:22His wife, Muskaan, and her lover, Sahil, allegedly chopped his body into 15 pieces

00:27and dumped them in a blue plastic drum filled with cement.

00:30When police found the drum, India found a new meme.

00:33Instagram, X, YouTube, full of jokes about the blue drum.

00:37Men jokingly scared of girlfriends standing next to it.

00:41But here's the thing, behind the meme is a disturbing pattern.

00:44Women in relationships killing their male partners.

00:47In Auraiya, 22-year-old Pragati Yadav had her husband shot two weeks into the marriage.

00:52Police found him bleeding in a field. He died the next day.

00:56In Jaipur, Gopali Devi and her lover smashed her husband's head with an iron pipe,

01:01strangled him, and then burned the body near a temple.

01:04In Bareilly, Aarti killed her husband-to-be with a 17-year-old.

01:07She's now serving a life sentence.

01:09In Telangana, Swati Reddy bludgeoned her husband to death,

01:12then poured acid on her lover's face so he could impersonate the dead man after plastic surgery.

01:18Yes, really.

01:19In Karnataka, Niharika allegedly killed her husband for Rs 8 crore in assets.

01:24She lured him to a remote location, strangled him, and burned his body in a coffee plantation.

01:29These are not isolated cases.

01:32In 2023 alone, 306 husbands were murdered by their wives or intimate partners in India.

01:37213 of those involved the wife and the lover working together.

01:41But don't get me wrong, it's imperative not to let the blue drum overshadow the pervasive

01:46and systemic violence that women continue to endure daily.

01:49A 2023 study revealed that 72.5% of Indian women surveyed had experienced some form of abuse,

01:57physical, sexual, or psychological, during their relationships.

02:00According to NCRB, reported crimes against women increased by 12.9%

02:05from 2018 to 2022, with a rate of 66.4 incidents per 1 lakh women in 2022.

02:12So while the blue drum meme gets likes and LOLs,

02:15maybe it's also time we looked at what it really represents.

02:18Meme born from murder, a punchline hiding a pattern.

02:22But don't let it cloud your view on the much deeper crisis of women's safety in India.

02:26I'm Anish Adhikari, thank you for watching First Things First.

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