In the quiet hours before sunrise on Monday July 6th, in JJ Colony, Chintamani, Karnataka, just 85 km from Bengaluru, Ejaz arrived on his motorcycle. He was 30. His estranged wife Shama, 25, and her younger sister Reshma, 18, were asleep in the house. Shama’s three young children were there too.
Ejaz did not come to talk. He came with a sharp weapon. He hacked both women in the neck. They died where they lay. Then he loaded the children onto his bike, rode them to his home in Gulpet, Kolar, left them there, and walked into the local police station at 8:30 a.m. to surrender.
Kolar police called Chintamani. The bodies were still warm. Superintendent of Police Kushal Chousky said Shama had been staying at her parental home for four months after her mother’s death. She had refused to return to her husband in Kolar. Ejaz kept demanding she come back with the children. She kept saying no. That refusal, police say, appears to be the trigger.
Family members painted a longer, uglier picture. Eight years of marriage. Ejaz repaired sheet metal and almirahs for a living. He drank heavily. He gambled. He harassed his wife. Village elders stepped in multiple times. The harassment continued. Ejaz had repeatedly threatened to kill Shama and her sisters. After her mother died, Shama told her family she was done. She wanted out.She got out in the most final way possible, murdered in the home she had fled to for safety, alongside the 18-year-old sister who happened to be there.
This is not an isolated horror. In the span of roughly four weeks in June and early July 2026, Indian news carried reports of several women killed by men who claimed ownership over them:
In Hyderabad on June 10, a 38-year-old woman (second wife) was shot three times in her own home by her 48-year-old husband, who suspected an affair.
In Bengaluru on June 14, a 22-year-old woman from Sikkim was stabbed to death in her rented room by her live-in boyfriend of one month over jealousy.
In Delhi on June 18, a 30-year-old woman was stabbed by her husband during a domestic dispute; he was later picked up in Mumbai.
In Faridabad on June 27, 26-year-old Neha Kumari, six months pregnant, was allegedly beaten, nearly strangled, and had her head repeatedly dunked in water by her husband after an argument about him going to work. He fled.
In Hisar, a 32-year-old woman in a live-in relationship was stabbed at a market by her partner over suspicions she was talking to another man.
These are the ones that made it into the news. NCRB data shows thousands of dowry deaths and domestic violence killings every year, over 5,700 dowry deaths alone in 2024. Many more go unreported or are disguised as accidents or suicides.
The pattern is brutally consistent. A woman tries to leave or refuses to return. A man feels his control slipping. Alcohol, gambling, suspected “affairs,” or simple defiance become justifications for lethal violence.
Children are often present, witnesses or next of kin left motherless. Sisters, mothers, pregnant women, none are spared when the man decides she is no longer his property.
Where was the system?The National Commission for Women has a 24×7 helpline: 14490. It exists on paper. It promises counseling, legal aid, police referrals. Yet how many women in Chintamani, or Faridabad, or the villages around Kolar even know the number exists or even this name?
How many have ever seen it advertised on a wall, in a bus, on their phone? In the United States, every child learns 911 before they learn to read. In India, millions of women still do not know there is even a number they can call when a man first raises his hand or first utters “I will kill you.”
Safe houses are patchy at best. Bangalore and parts of West Bengal have some functional shelters where women can hide, sometimes even work and rebuild. Elsewhere, the infrastructure is skeletal.
NGOs that once filled these gaps who have helped countless women navigate through these tough situations have been crippled by funding cuts and FCRA restrictions. The government cannot help enough. The “adjust” culture preached by families and elders remains lethal advice: stay, endure, give him another chance. Until the first slap becomes the last breath.
Ejaz’s case is textbook. Threats were made. Elders “intervened.” Shama left anyway. The system did not protect her. It waited for the bodies.The three children who watched their mother and aunt being hacked will carry this for life. The families left to bury two young women will carry it.
Every woman reading this who has ever been told to “compromise” or “adjust” or “not provoke him” carries it.This will continue, next week, next month, next year, until three things change in reality, not on paper: Every woman in every village and city must know, instantly, that there is help and that leaving is not failure but survival.
Threats to kill must be treated as imminent danger by police and courts, not as “matrimonial discord.”
The cultural permission slip that says a man’s ego and “honour” are worth more than a woman’s life must be ripped up in homes, police stations, and courtrooms alike.
Shama. Reshma. Neha. The unnamed women in Hyderabad, Delhi, Hisar. They are not statistics. They are the price India continues to pay for its refusal to treat violence against women as the national emergency it is.The men who do this are cowards who wait until the woman is alone or asleep or unprotected. The system that fails to protect her is complicit. And every person who still tells a woman to “adjust” instead of helping her escape shares the blood on those floors in Chintamani.
The National Commission for Women has failed women miserably. Its 24×7 helpline (14490) exists on paper, but its presence is invisible where it matters most, in the villages of Kolar, the colonies of Chintamani, the rented rooms of Bengaluru. It has not reached out aggressively enough, has not made itself felt in the lives of women staring down threats, and has not carved out reliable escape routes: safe shelters where a woman can flee, rebuild, change cities if needed, protect her identity, and stand on her own feet.
Yes, the man may lurk. He may follow. He may wait for the moment she is alone and unprotected. But a supported woman surrounded by a functioning system becomes untouchable. These men are ultimately cowards. They thrive on isolation, on the family chorus of “adjust,” on the absence of immediate backup.
Call the helpline if you or someone you know needs it: 14490. Know it. Share it. Use it before the next dawn comes with another motorcycle and another sharp weapon or the next morning, when you find another woman or child dead, let number 14490 stick in your head.
