Aishwarya Rai and Kiranjit Ahluwalia
Here’s the story from wikipedia.
In 1979, at the age of 24, Ahluwalia left her home of Chakkalal in Punjab to travel to the United Kingdom after wedding her British Indian husband--a man she had only met once. For ten years, she suffered domestic violence of profound severity. Her husband's abuse took the form of physical violence, food deprivation, and rape.
When Ahluwalia looked to her family for help, they reprimanded her, saying it was a matter of family honor that she remain with her husband. She ultimately tried running away from home, but was found by her husband and brought back into her abusive environment. During her marriage, Ahluwalia had two sons, Ravi and Sanjay, who often bore witness to the violence she endured.
One evening in the spring of 1989, Ahluwalia was attacked by her husband as he tried to break her ankles and burn her face with a hot iron, apparently trying to extort money from her extended family. Later that night while her husband lay sleeping, she draped a blanket soaked with gasoline around his feet, ignited it with a candle, and ran into a garden with her three-year-old son.
In a later interview she discussed her thoughts that night, "I decided to show him how much it hurt. At times I had tried to run away, but he would catch me and beat me even harder. I decided to burn his feet so he couldn't run after me."
Five days later, Deepak died from complications of his burn injuries. Ahluwalia, who could only speak broken English at the time, was arrested and ultimately charged with murder and sentenced to life imprisonment at Lewes Crown Court on December 7 1989. At the time, her council made little of the violence she had endured, while the prosecution suggested that Ahluwalia was motivated by jealousy due to her husband's repeated affairs.
Her case eventually came to the attention of the Southall Black Sisters (SBS) and Ahluwalia became a symbol of the repression of Asian women as the group pressed for a mistrial. Ahluwalia had her life sentence remanded in 1992 on grounds of insufficient council--Ahluwalia had not been aware that she could plead guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. In addition, it was brought to light that she was suffering from severe depression when she lashed back at her husband, which had likely altered her decision making abilities at the time.
Ultimately, Ahluwalia's struggle helped raise awareness of domestic violence in families of non-English speaking immigrants to Western countries, as well as changing the laws for domestic abuse victims in the United Kingdom. Her case, known in British legal textbooks as R vs. Ahluwalia, changed the definition of the word 'provocation' in cases of battered women, so as to reclassify her crime as manslaughter instead of murder.
Cool huh!! See what one lady can do!! Amazing isn’t it??!!!
Ok la..What prompt me into publishing this is, I bought Provoked cast by Aishwarya Rai and found out it was a true story. So I looked it up!! But see…now you know about Kiran Ahluwalia right!!
And check out the awards she received:-
Ahluwalia was honored in 2001 at the first Asian Women Awards for helping to bring to light a subject that had been kept behind closed doors in the patriarchal Sikh culture. She has also since written an autobiography with co-author Rahila Gupta, Circle of Light.
Her story was fictionalized in the controversial film Provoked, which was recently screened at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival. Naveen Andrews
That’s that for now.
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