Bringing India's daughters back home
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 11 April 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
The Fifth Floor is at the heart of global storytelling on the BBC World Service, bringing you the best stories from journalists in the BBC's 43 language services. We're here to help you make sense of the stories making headlines around the world; to excite your curiosity and to get to grips with the facts. Recent episodes have investigated Russia’s youth armies and how they make soldiers of Ukrainian children; featured the BBC team who were the first journalists to the site of the Nigerian school kidnappings and reflected the effects of internet blackouts in Iran, Uganda and India. If you want to know more about Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, and the legacy of Hugo Chavez; or how Vladimir Putin’s network of deep cover spies operates; or why Donald Trump signed an executive order granting white South Africans asylum in the US, we have all those stories and more.
Presenter: Faranak Amidi. Producer: Laura Thomas and Caroline Ferguson
Presented by Faranak Amidi.
(Photo: Faranak Amidi. Credit: Tricia Yourkevich.)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.0 | Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.8 | You're listening to The Fifth Floor. |
| 0:17.6 | The Fifth Floor, you needniosynos. |
| 0:20.0 | You're aiked the fifth floor, Farnak Amidi, Sobath. |
| 0:26.7 | This is the fifth floor at the heart of global storytelling |
| 0:31.2 | with BBC journalists from all around the world. |
| 0:35.0 | I'm your host, Faranak, Amy D. |
| 0:49.9 | In India, official figures suggest that one in three women experienced domestic violence. In 2023, police registered over 130,000 cases of marital abuse, |
| 0:58.1 | and more than 6,000 women were killed in disputes relating to dowries. |
| 1:04.3 | Despite these high numbers, societal attitudes to domestic abuse |
| 1:08.6 | are changing only very slowly in the country, with families often |
| 1:12.8 | reluctant to be seen to be interfering in a daughter's marriage. Now, a new short film is setting |
| 1:20.6 | out to push the pace. Gita Pandey, Women and Social Affairs Editor for BBC India, is with me in the fifth floor, Sudea. Welcome to the fifth floor. It's great to have you with us. |
| 1:32.3 | Thank you very much. So tell me about this film. What happens in it? You know, it's a film called Band Baja Betea, which is the Hindi for a wedding band and daughter. |
| 1:45.2 | And it's a promotional film. |
| 1:46.9 | It's an advertising film. |
| 1:48.2 | So it's essentially like it's a very short, three and a half minute long film. |
| 1:52.6 | But the message it conveys is like really punchy. |
| 1:57.6 | It starts off with this father. |
| 1:59.7 | He's in his little chemist store. And receives a phone call and you can make out that he is, you know, his face falls. |
| 2:08.7 | And you can make out that he's talking to his daughter. |
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