A high-profile death case involving a former Indian model and actor has reignited national outrage over India’s persistent dowry system crisis, after the country’s top federal anti-crime agency took a key suspect into custody this week.
Thirty-three-year-old Twisha Sharma was found dead in her marital home in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, on 12 May, just five months after she married lawyer Samarth Singh. The case has sparked intense public debate and conflicting narratives from the two sides: Sharma’s family claims she was murdered following months of brutal dowry harassment, while Singh and his family maintain her death was a suicide driven by pre-existing mental health struggles.
On Thursday, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), which took over the investigation earlier this week from local police, arrested Giribala Singh—Samarth’s mother, a retired high court judge—after hours of intensive questioning. The arrest came just after the Madhya Pradesh High Court revoked her anticipatory bail, ruling that the lower trial court had incorrectly dismissed critical evidence and witness statements when it granted the bail earlier.
Sharma’s family has leveled a series of severe accusations against the couple. They allege that harassment over dowry began almost immediately after the wedding, with the Singh continuously pressing Sharma for more gifts and financial assets from her birth family. When Sharma became pregnant several months into the marriage, the family claims the Singhs falsely accused her of infidelity and coerced her into terminating the pregnancy, a claim the Singhs deny. The Singhs argue the termination was Sharma’s own independent choice, and insist she suffered from untreated mental health challenges that led her to take her own life.
Samarth Singh was already taken into police custody earlier this month. He fled Bhopal after Sharma’s death and was captured by local authorities in the city of Jabalpur on 22 May. Local police initially filed a formal charge of dowry death against both Singhs shortly after Sharma’s body was found, a charge that remains in place as the CBI investigation proceeds.
The case has already captured national media attention and become a top headline across India, in large part due to the prominent social standing of the Singh family. Beyond that, it has pushed the long-running crisis of dowry-related violence back into the center of public discourse. Though the practice of demanding dowry from a bride’s family was formally banned across India all the way back in 1961, thousands of women are killed every year in dowry-related deaths, when a groom’s family murders the bride for what they deem an insufficient dowry.
Controversy has followed the investigation from its earliest stages. Sharma’s family demanded a second autopsy after alleging the first post-mortem examination was tainted by political and procedural interference, claiming local police were working to cover up wrongdoing to protect the well-connected Singh family. Local law enforcement has repeatedly denied those accusations. Sharma was cremated on Sunday following the completion of the second autopsy ordered by authorities.