AIIMS doctor suicide: Father-in-law defends 'gay' son, says responsibility of 'traditional' woman to make marriage work

On 18 April, Priya Vedi, an anesthetist at the AIIMS hospital in New Delhi, slit her wrists and killed herself. Before taking her life, she posted a long note on Facebook revealing the details of her unhappy marriage, in which she blamed her gay husband, for pushing her to take her life. The post was widely circulated on Facebook before it was taken down yesterday. In it, she had mentioned the names of her husband’s friends who she alleged had sexual relations with him.

In a report on The Indian Express , Vedi’s husband, also a doctor at AIIMS, has been reported to have been sent to police custody for 14 days. Also, during a conversation with the paper, Vedi’s father-in-law said that he only came to know about his son’s sexual orientation after his so wife complained to him.

He, however, added that, being a ’traditional Indian woman’, it was Vedi’s responsibility to make the marriage work.

The Indian Express quotes Vedi’s father-in-law as saying:

“These things are more common today so we do not know why our daughter-in-law was so disturbed. Of course, he did not tell me he had these problems. In fact, the marriage was fixed only after he met her and gave his consent.”

Vedi’s colleagues were in shock and said that they had no clue about the nature of her relationship with her husband. Vedi never discussed the issues with any of her colleagues.

Hindustan Times quotes a colleague as saying, “I have had a fairly decent amount of interaction with her as we used to be together on operation theatre duties that at times lasted for 7 to 8 hours. She never let out her state of mind and it did not show either as normally happens when you spend a lot of time with an emotionally disturbed person. There was another colleague who was going through a bad divorce some time back and she would express her feelings openly.”

In fact, according to reports, Vedi came across as happy in her marriage. She would continuously talk about her husband, also a doctor at AIIMS, and would also show his pictures to her colleagues.

Vedi’s husband’s colleagues also attested to the fact that the couple had never let the truth of their marriage slip out in public. They remember him as ‘meticulous’ and ‘quiet’. However, one of his colleagues mentioned that he hardly ever brought her to social gatherings where most doctors were accompanied by their spouses.