E-Paper
Murder, suicide, no regrets: Tale of hate crime in Madhya Pradesh
The matter came to light after the bodies of the woman and her baby were found in Samsgarh forest on November 14.
A 25-year-old woman was raped and killed by her father on November 6, allegedly angered by her inter-caste marriage to a 21-year-old man 18 months ago. Their eight-month-old son, suffering from pneumonia, was also found dead near the woman’s body in a forest in Madhya Pradesh’s Sehore district on November 14. Five days later, the husband allegedly died by suicide, unable to bear the trauma. Yet, for both families, there was no remorse.
Family members of the 21-year-old man from an OBC (other backward caste) community told HT that he got married a year and a half ago with the 25-year-old woman, who belonged to a scheduled caste (SC), after eloping. At the time, the families tried to locate them and even filed a missing person’s complaint at the Bilkisganj police station in Sehore. When the police found them, the couple told them that they were married and wanted to begin their life afresh.
“The woman’s father, 55, a farmer by profession, threatened the couple that he would kill them if they ever tried to come back to him or meet him. The man’s family also refused to accept the woman from the scheduled caste and the couple started living separately in the same village. The woman gave birth to a baby eight months ago and the man’s family accepted the baby, but not the woman,” said Sameer Yadav, additional superintendent of police, Sehore.
“This Diwali, the woman’s husband, who used to work at a tent house, had to go to Raipur, Chhattisgarh for a month. The woman was alone at her home and decided to celebrate Diwali with her elder sister in the Ratibad area in Bhopal. She also thought of getting in touch with her parents,” said the officer.
However, the infant developed pneumonia and on the night of November 5, died. The elder sister then informed their father and brother, and on the pretext of burying the baby, they took the 25-year-old to the Samsgarh forest nearby. “This is where the woman was killed. The father raped her before strangulating her,” a senior police official said.
The matter came to light after the bodies of the woman and her baby were found in Samsgarh forest on November 14. The woman’s husband informed the police that the woman didn’t have a mobile phone and she last contacted him via the mobile number of the landlord of her sister on Diwali. The man had then called the landlord wanting to speak to his wife, but the landlord told him that his wife had returned home. On Friday, unable to bear the burden of his wife and child’s death, the man died by suicide.
The man’s paternal uncle told HT, “In the villages, caste matters a great deal. The woman belonged to a village which is just 15 km away from us. The villagers knew about the caste of woman and they were not ready to accept the inter-caste marriage.”
“She used to live separately in her house. The family was trying to accept her but before it could happen, she died. The family is definitely shocked after the incident but they are not sympathetic towards the couple. They still feel they had committed a big mistake,” said the uncle.
The family members of the woman refused to speak to the media. But, the woman’s father, who is lodged in jail, has no regrets, a senior police officer said.
An investigating officer from Bhopal, Sudesh Tiwari, said, “The father has no regret. He said he knew his daughter’s fate. She deserved it. Her baby died because God wanted to give him a chance to take revenge.”
“During interrogation for hours, the man was smiling all the time and said he did what is correct. I told him that I had never seen a heartless man like him and he said that death and rape was nothing compared to pain the woman gave to him and his entire family. She died once but her inter-caste marriage killed his family every day as relatives had started avoiding them and used to mock him,” said Tiwari.
The woman’s village panchayat secretary, Dinesh Kaleriya said, “I don’t know much about the family but nobody mocked about the marriage of the woman in the village. The father himself used to feel offended. Now, the family had gone to some other place and there is a lock at the house.”
