In India, official figures suggest that one in three women experience domestic violence. In 2023, police registered over 130,000 cases of marital abuse and more than 6,000 women were killed in disputes relating to dowries. Despite these high numbers, societal attitudes to domestic abuse are changing only very slowly in the country, with families often reluctant to be seen to be interfering in a daughter's marriage. Now a new short film, Band Baaja Bitiya (Hindi for "a wedding band and a daughter") is setting out to push the pace of change. Geeta Pandey, Women and Social Affairs Editor for BBC India, looked into thetrue story that inspired the film.

In February this year, a Kenyan woman called Joy, who was a 19-year-old student at the time, discovered that she was at the center of a viral video circulating on the social media platform, TikTok. In it, she's approached by a man who says he's from Russia and their interaction is secretly filmed by him. Several other similar clips of women were shared widely online. The creator of the videos had been promoting himself online as a so-called pickup coach and his content has proved extremely popular. But for many of the women, these videos have had real life consequences. Mungai Ngige from the BBC's Disinformation Unit investigated.

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Presenter: Faranak Amidi. Producer: Laura Thomas and Caroline Ferguson

Presented by Faranak Amidi.

(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)

Bringing India's daughters back home

The Documentary Podcast