July 01, 2006

It's the lipstick, stupid

The wife of a banker, you live in a flat in a suburban Bombay high-rise. You have three kids of your own. You employ a maid in your home. She's young -- 10, maybe 15 -- the confusion perhaps because of that way that among children in India, it's sometimes difficult to tell their age.

Anyway, there comes a day when you find the girl trying on your mother's lipstick.

What do you do?

Simple. You decide to teach the girl a lesson for her "indiscretion and audacity."

Yes, but what do you do?

Still simple. You spank her. You tie her up. You take an aluminium rod and insert it into the girl's anus. You stuff chilli powder down her throat and into her genitals. You hang her from the ceiling of the flat.

You clean up, then you tell the cops the girl committed suicide.

Very simple.

I'm not sure what you do with the lipstick.

Read about Roma Bhatia, this particular wife and mother. Here, here and in plenty of other reports.

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did you notice the part about being "raped or merely sexually tortured" MERELY! How can you be merely sexually tortured? Scary.

Anonymous said...

She's just a child. Soma I belive her name was. A faceless soul, that put on lipstick to maybe see a part of her face in the mirror that identified her as a human being. But in the world of self centered human beings, Roma just could not share that lipstick with her. Not even having 3 children of her own, did the motherly instincts kick in. Only her foot as she beat the child and assaulted her in a way that has lead me to believe we have crossed the line from human beings into monsters. But after all Soma's only a face in the crowd, and she was trying to draw lips to maybe show us that she too was a human being. Look where it got her. And yet we stand by and do nothing about it, as other children are abused and tortured. As long as it is not our family, or our members that get abused we stand by and watch others die. Roma did not get away. I am glad. I knew her.

Anonymous said...

I was horrified when I heard of this story. I was inhuman. If Roma Bhatia doesn't deserve the death sentence, then nobody does. But what surprised me most was that there was so little of this on the hundreds of 24 gour news channels. The Indian medis is brillint at stupid stories (namely Rahul Mahajan) and surpressing meaningful and important stories such as this.
Here's hoping Roma Bhatia burns in hell.
Cheers

Anonymous said...

Years ago, I lived in Galactica. This woman Roma's daughter, Kritika, went to my school. She was about three years younger to me, and she was completely crazy. Not in the horrible cruel way like her mom, but just crazy. Like she didnt know how to behave around people. She made a complete fool of herself everywhere she went. And, being kids, we weren't very nice to the poor thing. We teased her and laughed at her, and made fun of her on the bus. But well, she grew up with Roma Bhatia, it wasn't her fault she turned out a little weird. What could Roma know about bringing up kids? She was obviously quite unbalanced.She had the audacity to yell at me once, for meing mean to her child. Sure, I was mean, but I was just kid mean. i just laughed at her accent and bullied her, a VERY little. She deserved it, too, she was insufferable. But the fact that the woman who went on to commit such horrific atrocities on a poor ten year old girl, YELLED at me coz I was being mean... Roma's words :"Why do you treat her like this? Can't you see? She's so much younger than you!"

Gosh, what a hypocrite.

I feel sorry for Kritika now. Wonder how she's doing. How all this insanity in her family affected her. Poor girl. I'd be nicer to her this time around. It wasn't her fault she had Roma Bhatia for her mother.

Anonymous said...

I read about the comments on Roma Bhatia.I feel that people have taken this in a wrong sence and how does someone believe that a mother of three would do this to a girl who is of her daughter's age.
Roma lives in a good family and is from a well cultured and educated background.
Just because she was a victim of a police pressure act,she faces these problems.The police had no choice as there was a lot of media and public pressure to pull Roma and take her into custody, which dragged poor Roma into all this.
I pity the people who think that she was the one who committed this act.But no one knows who has committed this crime but for now Roma has become the victim and it is her family who bears the pain and this has made no difference either to the police or the society.
Police should have probed this incidence well and should have investigated in deep instead of coming into public pressure and taking this dratic step and putting her to Jail.I find people saying that she should go to hell.But please think it over again and place your comments on the same site.

Anonymous said...

Read about the latest comments on Roma Bhatia as well as comments passed on her daughter. I feel ashamed to say this but before raising questions against her lets say almost 80% of the higher middle class families have hired poor and under age children where on daily basis they are brutally tortured by their employers but still manage to get away with. Just because either they had higher contacts or just bribed the government and are left free. But here since this victim must not have got chance to proove her innocence so she is labelled as a monster. I feel we educated people are monsters who are reacting too harsh to the fabricated news published by media and informed by the police. How many of us feel safe in our country where we get to see our own government officials who have taken oath to save the country and their citizens from getting targeted to evil doings and later on these officials turns out to be the offenders and act as evils ? Still we citizens are encouraging these officials to continue with their illegal acts and dont even bother to raise our voice against the injustice and just pay some handsome amount or just say saab saab and try to impress them so that they let the citizens stay in peace.Oh please people grow up and dont act as blindfolded puppets. When we all are so well wersed with the functioning of our legal system then we as responsible citizen should analyse the news what comes out in public are either totally fabricated or they are not the 100% truth as we know how active our police force is when it comes to sensitive investigation and how the news gets leaked out from their rooms for just handfull of rupees. So dear citizens before passing comments on the victim or her family is like doing injustice because the family knows in what deep pain they must be going through as she is having 3 small kids who have the right to live their lives with due respect and we citizen should stop bullying them by passing inhuman comments on them... And also the justice with the deceased girl would have been justified if the police would have done proper and thorough investigation and would find out the actual culprit inspite of Roma Bhatia or her family. Had the police been a little more advanced in their investigation they would have caught the real culprit behind this and would not even had to cook up the filmy story on the pressure of public or media mounting on them.. So friends its a request would like you all to consider your statements and if possible try to analyse what is the truth and ask your own heart that can a mother of 3 kids can go to such extent of brutally killing a 10 year old girl where she too has a daughter of that same age? So friends try to pray for justice for the soul of the deceased girl and also include in your prayers the real culprit is caught and punished and the innocent are given justice.

Anonymous said...

Hey people please stop supporting ROMA. i knw her peronally. She has been a Black SPOT on the family...

SHE WAS ALWAZ WILD AND SUCH A THING IS EPECTED OUT OF HER.
BUT GOD PUNISHED HER ASAP....SHE WITH HER PARENTS AND BROTHER ARE NOW IN JAIL. AND JUSTICE HAS BEEN DONE.

HOPE THEY TORTURE HER DERE AND SHE REALISES WAT SHE HAS DONE.

MAY GOD TAKE CARE OF HER KIDS

Anonymous said...

i was shocked to see on crime patrol what this lady had done.
My god......if it was rape case i could understand.

But inserting a rod smeared with chilly powder sounds really schizophrenic.....

I think she was suffering from some serious mental disorder

Tina said...

Could someone send me a link to this episode on crime patrol pls??

Anonymous said...

I do not blame those who have posted their comments. We believe that whatever media or police etc says is true. I wish to tell the people who have posted the comments that media people and police are normal people like us who try to find easy way out. It is possible that the crime was committed by some body else. Residents were away from the house and Roma being married will have been in her husbands house. Police has not said that residents came to commit the crime nor has police said that Roma came to commit the crime. It clearly shows that police has tried to find the easy way out by falsely framing the respectful families. Has police said that they have done proper investigation? Is there any person who can say for sure that what is said by media or by police is true? We only assume to be true but in many cases it is observed that police falsely frames innocent people. You must have read in news papers that many many people have spent their life time in prison and then after say 7 to 10 to 15 years are found by higher courts that these people are innocent. Do you believe that the police does proper investigation without getting something. You must have read in news papers that police is most corrupt. Some thing must have happened because of which police has framed these respectable families. Can any one give any reason why respectable families will do such an act. These families will want to live their own respectable life than to do such an act. May GOD bless the families and take them out of the false frame.