Three women are sentenced to Death as they dare to speak out and threaten to break the Status Quo of a male dominated society.
In a rural Indian village two corrupt villagers contractor Tirpat Singh and his colleague MLA Durga Pandey are rallying the other villagers into doing things that will benefit themselves. Their main target is separating two brothers, Abhay Singh and his younger brother, Vinay who live with their father and respective wives - namely the two sisters - Chandravati who is marry to Abhay and Ketki who is marry to Vinay. To this extent their efforts mature into considerable progress when Abhay leave Chandravati in care of his father only to turn an ascetic who reside in a temple while at the same time Vinay is swindled in his construction business by the duo. Shortly after Chandravati take ill and is forced to take up resident with a sympathetic male villager, Rambaran Manto who she shares an illegitimate relationship with. Meanwhile Vinay find out the true reality of Tirpat and Durga only to pull away from them. Then Vinay is killed in broad daylight leaving behind Ketki as the only witness to this crime; after Vinay's death the duo turn their attention to Ketki by physically tormenting her for the family's assets.—gavin ([email protected])
MLA Durga Pandey and Contractor Tirpat Singh are two corrupt villagers, who manipulate others to get what they want. Their main concern is to divide two brothers - namely Abhay Singh and his younger brother Vinay. They do succeed considerably, after Abhay renounces married life and takes on the celibate life of a temple priest, leaving his wife, Chandravati, alone, devastated, and dependent on Rambaran, a sympathetic villager. Vinay is in love with Ketki, and soon both get married. Ketki seeks to protect her husband from the growing influence of Tirpat Singh, but Vinay ignores her, and even physically abuses her, warning her not to interfere with his affairs. However, Vinay later realizes that Tirpat has taken advantage of his friendship and swindled him. Vinay is humbled, he apologizes to Ketki, and both of them put their resources together to do what then can to reclaim their property.—rAjOo ([email protected])
Three women in a Bihar village are sentenced to death by their menfolk. Their crime is that they dared to protest.
Ketki (Madhuri Dixit), an educated young girl with dreams in her eyes, gets married into a family of upper class landlords, whose fortunes have been consumed by lethargy and extravagance. Her husband Vinay Singh (Ayub Khan) has no agricultural land left, does not have the capital to start a business, and fails to secure a job due to the governments policy of reservation for the backward castes. Ketki makes sacrifices to support him in his entrepreneurial endeavours. But fails to restrain him when, in desperation to get rich quick, he aligns with the wrong people. Contractor and power broker Tirpat (Mohan Joshi) and local politician Pandey (Harish Patel) make use of Vinay's innocence for their own profit. Vinay's degeneration is complete when he thrashes Ketki for objection to his misdeeds. Her upbringing, self-respect and righteousness make it difficult for her to bear this humiliation. She suffers.
Chandravati (Shabana Azmi) is the wife of Vinay's elder brother Abhay Singh (Mohan Agashe). Greedy for the wealth and political clout of the local temple, Abhay Singh masterminds the murder of the temple head and gets himself ordained as his successor. This entails renouncing the world and deserting his wife, which he cruelly does, citing her childlessness. The truth is that Chandravati has shielded her husband's impotence for seventeen years and now suddenly finds herself in the ignominious position of an abandoned woman. The solace offered by a lower caste well wisher of the family Rambaran (Om Puri) causes unexpected problems for her. She suffers.
Kanti (Shilpa Shirodkar), a low-caste labourer is exploited by the contractor to whom her husband owed money Burdened with looking after an ailing mother, while her husband is away to earn money to repay the debt, she lives in the hope that he will return, She suffers.
Suffering comes naturally to women here. Regardless of caste and class, their role in the family and society is predetermined and they must never cross these limits. Several social, moral and mythological images have been created to indoctrinate women with the virtue of sacrifice and submissiveness. They must conform to these role models.
However, circumstances force the women in Mrityudand to break these rules and make their own. This cannot be tolerated as the Society finds its maleness threatened, and the men, putting aside their own bloodthirsty conflicts, unite to teach the women a lesson.
The three women are branded evil and sentenced to death. But when the men come to carry out the Death Sentence, there is a silent but massive rebellion which they are not prepared for.
