With news of brutal rapes and gruesome murders becoming a common norm in our country, here is another tragic tale that occurred recently in the heart of India, Madhya Pradesh. A family man as you may call him, a person who loved his wife and two adorable daughters; this 39 year old IIT graduate surrendered himself to the police on account of killing his family. Reason? He feared they were HIV positive.
The man confessed that he was a visitor of the red light areas in New Delhi. A recurring ulcer in the mouth made him doubt that he might have contacted HIV. Petrified, he Googled the symptoms of AIDS. To his utter despair, most of the symptoms matched his conditions, especially his sudden weight loss. He then got a blood test done in a Chhatarpur laboratory and the reports showed he was HIV positive.
He went on to discuss the matter with his wife who palpably was upset with this fact. After a small fight of two days, she consoled her husband and said that it was OK. The man was suicidal and committed to have first thought of killing himself only, but the idea did not find acceptance with his wife as she and the couple’s younger daughter also showed symptoms of HIV. “The children cannot be left all alone to fend for themselves”, it was this thought that gave birth to the suicide pact.
He took his family to Amravati on the 28th of February. The couple had thought of hanging their children first and then following suit, but the painful thought of strangling their 9 and 2 year old daughters terrified them to think of some other alternative. They Googled for other ways of painless killing.
On the 4th of March, the man drove his wife and daughters to Betul where he jumped his car down a gorge after dousing it with petrol from inside. The car overturned after hitting a tree. The man then came out of the car’s window and set the car ablaze. The children screamed and held onto their mother, but he could not collect the strength to get in the car and save them or so. Four failed suicide attempts later, he went to a friend in Amravati and narrated his ordeal. Finally he surrendered to the police on his friend’s advice.
The police refused to believe his story and sent his blood samples for examination. The samples tested HIV Negative. Yes. Negative.
The reason for me to come up with this article is not to narrate the tragic tale of the man who is now booked for murder of his own family and is awaiting his death, but to bring out the fact that more than the HIV it was the social stigma and the fear of discrimination that forced him to take such a step. AIDS has always been a taboo in India, and with a wide spectrum of differences in public opinions regarding the disease, it is very important to understand the basic difference between AIDS and HIV.
HIV or the Human Immunodeficiency Virus is the virus that is responsible for causing AIDS, whereas AIDS is a group of illnesses attained by the body when it becomes incapable of defending itself against certain infections. It is very important to know that there is a gap of time between HIV and the HIV virus to get converted into AIDS. This time period may be anywhere between 3 to 8 years or even longer than that.
Sometimes, an HIV positive person may witness natural death before falling in the grip of AIDS at all. Proper medical and most importantly appropriate social treatment is of utmost importance in this respect. Typecasting a particular section of the infected people as social stigmas is what leads to such horrifying incidents that are in fact a matter of shame for a developing nation like India, a country known for its culture and heritage. The heights of social extremism have already been experienced. India needs to change now and for the better!
