The Karnataka Home Minister G Parmeshwara said on Sunday that techie Atul Subhash’s suicide has opened up a debate about men’s rights in the country.

Subhash died by suicide in the early hours of December 9 after alleging harassment from his wife and her family. Subhash wrote “Justice is due” on every page of a 24-page note.

He also alleged in his suicide note that his wife had filed nine cases against him under various sections, including murder, sexual misconduct, harassment for money, domestic violence, and dowry.

“It’s a suicide and you know it has opened up a new discussion throughout the country. Because we always talked about women’s rights. Now suddenly, this particular case has exposed men’s rights, how weak the men’s rights system is working. It’s a debate throughout the country and let’s see where it will end,” Parmeshwara told PTI.

The Karnataka Home Minister pointed out the two points of the ongoing investigation. The first one he said was why he committed suicide and how the accused wife kept on filing cases against him. The second part, according to him, is the debate around men’s rights.

“As far as the Karnataka Police is concerned, they are investigating why the suicide happened. They have already arrested his wife and mother in law,” he added.

What has happened in the Atul Subhash suicide case?

Atul Subhash, the 34-year-old deputy general manager of a private firm, died by suicide last week in his Bengaluru apartment, leaving behind a 24-page suicide note, accusing his wife and her relatives of harassment. In his suicide note, he also alleged that a judge had demanded ₹5 lakh to “settle” the case.

His father said that his son had been “broken from inside” after multiple cases were filed against him and his family by his wife.

“My son used to say that there is a lot of corruption but he will fight as he is on the path of truth…He was broken from inside, though he didn’t tell anyone anything,” Subhash’s father Pawan Kumar told ANI.

Kumar, who currently stays in Bihar’s Samastipur, said, Subhash’s wife started filing cases against them in January 2021.

“She started filing cases since January 2021…My son had thought that she had left (their home) after Corona and that their 1-year-old son would grow up a little at his maternal uncle’s home… she also started filing cases against our entire family,” the father said.

The Bengaluru police arrested Subhash’s wife, mother-in-law and brother-in-law from Jaunpur, Uttar Pradesh in connection with the case

Earlier on December 11, the Supreme Court also expressed concern over the growing tendency to misuse Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which penalises cruelty by husbands and their relatives against married women.

While quashing a Section 498A IPC case against a husband and his parents in a different case, a bench of Justices BV Nagarathna and N Kotiswar Singh said that the Section became a tool for unleashing personal vendetta against the husband and his family by a wife.