Tossed into the seas of a tempestuous marriage, the Indian Navy is grappling with its biggest image problem after the wife of an officer alleged that it fosters a licentious environment within which careers are built.
The churning is happening in the Kochi-headquartered Southern Naval Command headed by Vice-Admiral Satish Soni, widely tipped to take over as the next chief of naval staff after the incumbent Admiral D.K. Joshi.
But the turbulence is by no means restricted to the defence establishment; it has re-ignited questions on relationships between men and women in India against the backdrop of a rash of charges of sexual harassment since the December 16 gang rape in Delhi.
At the centre of the turbulence are a lieutenant and his now-estranged wife.
Ravi Kiran from Uttarakhand is a 26-year-old marine commando, specially handpicked for the elite service, trained as a diver, flier and combat soldier in sea, land and air.
His wife, also a 26-year-old from Odisha, is no less professionally qualified. She holds a degree from IIT, Bombay, says she has worked with Morgan Stanley in the US for three years and is now competing to join the IAS.
They dated for months before marriage but were so deeply distrustful and fearful of each other that they recorded each other's conversations. (Evidence of psychological issues)
The couple had met through a social networking site. But in a few weeks of their conjugal life, the relationship erupted, tainting, in what now looks like a dirty tailspin into an inevitable break-up, captains, commodores, admirals and their wives. Defence minister A.K. Antony has asked for a report.
"They (my husband and his superiors) would beat me and molest me by tying me up. They would threaten me with dire consequences if I complained against them," she told The Telegraph this evening over telephone. (This newspaper is withholding her name.)
She has filed at least four reports with police against her husband and 10 other officers in his chain of command and their wives. The complaints have been registered across the country, in Mumbai, Kochi, Visakhapatnam and Delhi.
(Standard Harassment practice in India)
She alleges she was victimised by her husband and his colleagues because she refused to "sleep with them as part of a wife swapping network", which, she says, is "part and parcel of being in the navy".
The charge makes the navy livid because it tars every soldier-sailor and their spouses and makes it sound that it is the norm rather than the exception, even if that were true. The lieutenant himself filed for divorce on March 28 this year, according to an inquiry in the navy, "on grounds of mental and physical cruelty".
"It was common in the navy to have parties every day and to assign dress codes to the wives. Sometimes it would be dresses above knee length and sometimes sleeveless dresses. One had to do exactly what the senior officer said, otherwise one could lose his job. Ravi and his colleagues tried to humiliate me by posting my pictures on social networking sites and denying that I was married to him," said the woman, blaming the "culture of the navy" for her marital troubles.
"I took the case back when his parents intervened and begged me to take the case back. But in my statement to the high court while taking back the case I didn't say that they were innocent, instead I had them give the court written affidavits that they wouldn't harass me any more. I wish now I hadn't gone back to him after that," she said.
She lost her own parents when she was younger. Her immediate family, she says, is a brother living in California. But a report in the navy says she also has a sister.
The woman, who is now in Delhi, alleged that she was often locked up in her room and beaten up severely by her husband and her colleagues. "Through my ordeal never did I ever go to a doctor, nor a marriage counsellor. They will now try to say that I am mentally ill. I challenge them to show documents to prove that. I have never gone to a doctor nor have I ever gone to a marriage counsellor," she says.
The inquiry by the Southern Naval Command disputes this. It says there were efforts by her husband's superiors and their wives to resolve their marital dispute, that they were taken to a marriage counsellor and even a psychological therapist who diagnosed that she had bipolar disorder ' a state of mind in certain individuals with extreme mood swings.
Under the new anti-sexual harassment act passed by Parliament last month, a man charged in this fashion by a woman is liable to be arrested immediately pending investigation. The lieutenant has sought anticipatory bail.
