Honour killing: Two killed, another struggling for life

LUCKNOW - Falling in love may be the most natural thing in the world. But with social taboos still deep-rooted and strong in the wild west of Uttar Pradesh, two young women and a man were made to face the heat on account of their involvement with the opposite sex.

While one was hacked to death by her own father and brother in Kaushambi district (about 260 km from here), another girl is currently struggling for life after being thrown off the rooftop Saturday by her father, a police sub-inspector who is posted at Ghaziabad. The family lives in Meerut (about 400 km from here).

This comes close on the heels of yet another brutal “honour” killing of a young boy who dared to marry a girl outside his caste in Muzaffarnagar district.

According to the police, 19-year-old Soni, a resident of Khalilabad village in Kaushambi district, was hacked to death by her father Bachu Lal Kori, for insisting on marrying a boy of the same village.

“Kori, accompanied by his brother and son, thrashed Soni to death and then chopped her body into pieces before abandoning it in the fields outside a temple,” a police spokesman told IANS here Sunday. The father was not ready to approve a love marriage even though both the girl and boy belonged to the same caste.

Almost simultaneously, a police sub-inspector in Meerut threw his 21-year-old daughter Parul from the rooftop of his house because he was not ready to accept her “secret” wedding with a boy of her choice.

The helpless girl was rushed to the hospital by her neighbours, who gave an eyewitness account of the brutality committed on her by her father Suresh Pal Singh.

Parul’s condition was stated to be “critical”.

“Parul, a first year MBA student married her classmate Dileep Kumar at a temple, during the course of their college trip to Vaishno Devi temple earlier this month. However, no sooner the girl broke the news about her secret marriage to her parents, the father started beating her up and eventually flung her off the terrace,” police circle officer Tribhuvan Bisen told IANS over telephone from Meerut.

In the third instance, Anuj Tomar was arrested Saturday in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar district for allegedly murdering his sister Anshu’s lover Ajit Saini.

“I hacked him for the sake of honour… I wanted to save the prestige of my family and, therefore, killed him,” Anuj told reporters.

Police suspect that Anuj killed his sister as well since she is missing.