Suspect wanted to avenge his ‘public humiliation’

He couldn't bear the insult of being publicly assaulted by of her family. The humiliation he felt more than three years ago, say psychologists, was what drove Radhika Tanwar's alleged killer to punish her as violently as he did.

He couldn't bear the insult of being publicly assaulted by of her family. The humiliation he felt more than three years ago, say psychologists, was what drove Radhika Tanwar's alleged killer to punish her as violently as he did.

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"Stalkers have a very definite picture in their minds about the object of their affection. Any attempt, especially if it is through a violent public beating, to deter them from pursuing it just makes them more determined," said Dr Rajat Mitra, director of Swanchetan, an NGO that counsels both victims and perpetrators of crime.

Even the police, who established the identity of the man who killed the second-year student at Ram Lal Anand College after zeroing-in on two of his accomplices, said it was a battle between two social stigmas that led to the 20-year-old's violent death.

"The main accused, identified as Ram Singh from Uttar Pradesh's Sitapur, was Tanwar's neighbour in Naraina Village. He was assaulted by her father and elder brother three years ago. It was the beating that made his blood boil and seems to have pushed him over the edge," said HGS Dhaliwal, deputy commissioner of police (south).

Mitra, however, believed Radhika's murder was the tip of the iceberg when it comes to vigilante justice.

"A very dangerous trend, of imparting tribal justice, is emerging in society and neither the city nor the police are equipped to cope with it. While society needs to understand that public humiliation of a violent nature isn't the remedy for the perpetrator of a crime, the police need to handle such cases through psychological intervention and not third degree torture," Dr Mitra explained.

The police said they were in the process of bringing the alleged accomplices, identified as Tabrez and Ashraf, from their native village in Sitapur. The two supposedly harboured Singh after he had shot Radhika Tanwar on March 8 at a pedestrian bridge when she was walking to her college.