The recent events in India over the last month speak about something far deeper in terms of the criminalisation of grief in India and how profoundly gendered this process is. This criminalisation moves from domestic spaces to national politics and into the judiciary. The domestic nature of criminalising grief within households, particularly through the silencing of the survivor, extends itself into the larger political institutions of the country, despite its claim of being the largest democracy in the world.

The gendered silencing of the Unnao rape case survivor stands as a testimony to the larger pattern of gendered silencing of dissent in India, and it reveals a state-enforced hierarchy that decides whose lives matter more than others and whose bodies can be violated, silenced, and abandoned. This structural condition can be understood through what Achille Mbembe refers to as the creation of death worlds within the framework of necropolitics. This is no less than structural violence, or what can be described as slow death, where the survivor is subjected to daily forms of humiliation and systematically forced into silence while confronting entrenched patriarchal dogmas.

Judiciary as an Extension of Patriarchal Power

These patriarchal values do not remain confined to private spaces but visualise themselves more aggressively within the judicial institutions of India. This became evident after the hearing of a division bench of the Delhi High Court that suspended the life imprisonment of the convicted MLA from the ruling party BJP. The bench further directed that Kuldeep Singh Sengar should not come within a five kilometre radius of the survivor. However, this raises a critical question: does such a statement provide any real guarantee of the survivor’s safety?

This is nothing but slow death operating within the logic of necropolitics, where structural violence manifests through exclusion, humiliation, and the continuous production of vulnerability. It leads to the creation of death worlds where survivors are made to accept their own precarious existence, forced to live under constant threat, and pushed into a state of resignation within a system that demands silence rather than justice.

Slow Death as State Practice

National Crime Records Bureau data indicating that nearly 97 percent of victims know their offenders exposes how sexual harassment and violence are overwhelmingly embedded within intimate and domestic spaces. This proximity enables abuse to be normalised, absorbed, and silenced within households through mechanisms of shame, coercion, and enforced dependence. Such silencing does not remain private; it travels outward, reproducing itself within the structures of the state. The criminalisation of grief in India must be read through this continuum, where domestic suppression of survivors finds its institutional mirror in state repression.

Public mourning after sexual violence, caste-based violence, and communal riots has repeatedly been met with surveillance, police brutality, and criminal charges, revealing how grief, particularly when articulated by women and marginalised communities, is criminalised and how the act of mourning is deeply gendered in itself. In this process, mourning is stripped of its legitimacy and rendered a punishable act. The gendered silencing that begins within the household thus culminates in a political order that governs not only who may speak, but who may grieve, and under what conditions.

Godmen, Impunity, and Sanctioned Leniency

The criminalisation of grief and the deeply gendered nature of mourning can be further understood through the examples of godmen in India who are convicted rapists and yet have repeatedly been allowed to walk away from the gravity of the crime of rape. These figures, despite convictions, continue to enjoy state leniency and public legitimacy. The convicted rapist Ram Rahim, who is also a widely celebrated godman in India, has repeatedly been granted parole since his conviction and has received parole more than fifteen times since 2017. Similarly, another celebrated godman, Asaram Bapu, who has been in custody since 2013 and stands convicted in two rape cases, has also been repeatedly granted bail. These instances expose a necropolitical state that systematically privileges convicted perpetrators through leniency and legitimacy while relegating survivors to a condition of permanent vulnerability, enforced silence, and institutional abandonment, making unmistakably clear that power, rather than justice, governs whose suffering is recognised and whose lives are rendered expendable.

Caste, Marginalisation, and the Policing of Grief

This criminalisation is not only deeply gendered but also profoundly caste based. Survivors from marginalised castes are far more likely to encounter institutional apathy, delayed justice, intimidation, and renewed violence, as their suffering is systematically devalued within a social order that already marks their lives as expendable. In this necropolitical arrangement, grief itself becomes a site of control, revealing how the state determines not only who may live with dignity but who is allowed to mourn at all.

The examples of the Hathras case, the Unnao rape case, and that of Bilkis Bano speak to how the criminalisation of grief enforces a lived reality for women in India, particularly for those coming from lower caste and minority groups, and how this reality relentlessly exposes whose lives are protected and whose are abandoned. Mourning after sexual violence, caste-based violence, or communal riots has repeatedly been criminalised, policed, and surveilled, demonstrating how gendered suffering is systematically delegitimised. The policing of grief functions as a tool of governance, controlling whose suffering is acknowledged and whose is ignored. This criminalisation is not only deeply gendered but also profoundly caste based, as survivors from marginalised communities are far more likely to encounter institutional apathy, intimidation, and renewed violence. In this necropolitical arrangement, grief itself becomes a site of control, revealing how the state determines not only who may live with dignity but who is even allowed to mourn at all.

The author is a researcher based in Delhi and hails from Madhya Pradesh. Her research interests lie in intersectional feminism, workers' rights, the rights of tribal entities, and the study of violence. She did her Master's at the Centre for the Study of Social Inclusion, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.