Indian man strangles daughter to death for eloping with lover
New Delhi, Mar 5 (efe-epa).- A man has strangled his 20-year-old daughter to death in a western Indian city because she “dishonored” the family by running off with her boyfriend days after her forced marriage, police said on Friday.
The so-called “honor killing” took place in city of Dausa in the western state of Rajasthan, around 250 km (150 miles) west of national capital New Delhi.
Anil Singh Chauhan, a police officer in Dausa, told EFE that the accused Shankar Lal – in his early 50s – had recently married his daughter Pinky to a man, apparently against her wishes.
“The woman returned to her parents in less than four days after her wedding, perhaps following a minor scuffle with her husband and in-laws,” Chauhan said.
On Feb. 21, Pinky’s husband and her in-laws came to take her back but by then “she had eloped with her lover,” said the officer.
A day later, her father registered a missing complaint with the police, alleging that his newly-married daughter had been kidnapped.
Chauhan said the woman and her lover subsequently approached the Rajasthan High Court for intervention and requested protection.
“On Feb.26, the court ordered the police to provide security to the couple and make sure no harm reaches them,” he said.
However, the couple returned to Dausa on Mar. 1 and her father somehow found out where his daughter was in the town.
“He reached there and strangled her to death,” the police officer said, adding that Lal surrendered to the police the same day, confessing that he had killed his daughter. He was arrested immediately.
The incident comes close on the heels of a similar crime when a man, upset with his 17-year-old daughter’s love affair with a boy, beheaded her and walked to a police station in north India with the severed head.
A graphic video of the man in his 40s carrying a human head as he walks to surrender to the police was splashed over the social media networks and widely run on TV channels in India.
These murders are the latest in a series of gruesome crimes against women in different parts of India.
The so-called honor killings are not uncommon in India and the rest of South Asia, especially when a man and woman marry outside their caste or religion.
Most of the victims in such cases are women.
According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 28 cases of honor killings were registered in 2014, 251 cases in 2015, and 77 cases in 2016.
The NCRB later stopped categorizing crimes committed for the sake of the so-called family honor and tradition. EFE-EPA
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