Focus on Allahbadia instead of marital rape acquittal is telling

While India's media has been outraging over the obnoxious obscenity of a social media influencer, a woman's rapist — and possibly her killer — has been acquitted by the Chhattisgarh high court, because evidently, husbands are allowed to do as they please with their wives.

- Barkha Dutt

While India's media has been outraging over the obnoxious obscenity of a social media influencer, a woman's rapist — and possibly her killer — has been acquitted by the Chhattisgarh high court, because evidently, husbands are allowed to do as they please with their wives. The news is obsessed with one and refuses to give any airtime to the other. What does this say about our priorities?

I am certainly no fan of Ranveer Allahbadia aka Beer Biceps, whose ugly comments on watching one's parents have sex have pretty much revealed who he has always been. I have always thought his cultivated wide-eyed wonder camouflaged a certain vileness. To those who have argued that he is a "kid" who lost his way, I say, firstly, a person with a crafty business instinct and massive access to the echelons of power cannot be looked at like we would at a college kid just starting out. Next, I would point them in the direction of his earliest content. A cursory search would show you its basic sexism. It was about "seven secrets of a woman's mind" or "women's dating psychology" — quite visibly, content directed at men to be used to manipulate women into courtship and possibly more. More recently, in an interview, he urged the interviewee to "name three Indians who should be asked to leave the country." That was an incitement to violence, not an innocuous absence of smarts.

But should the State machinery be deployed against him? Is police action appropriate?