On June 19, Panchasheela Jamadar, a 30-year-old mother of two, was murdered in a moving autorickshaw by her boyfriend, Deepak Borse. Jamadar and Borse had been in a relationship for two years and had known each other before that. And yet, when Borse asked her to marry him, she turned him down, due to which he allegedly slit her throat with a chopper. According to Mumbai Police’s monthly statistics, the city witnessed 591 cases of crimes against women in January, 536 in February, 601 in March and 604 in April.

Mental health and relationship experts concur that rejection of a romantic overture is among the top reasons behind violence by men against women. While Borse’s case is among the extreme ones, authorities record scores of instances of online or in-person harassment of women who have rejected men. “The two classic extreme coping mechanisms after being rejected are resentful aggression towards the person or self harm. Both of these are two sides of the same coin,” says Aili Seghetti, founder of The Intimacy Curator, who conducts mock date sessions to prepare men for actual dates.