A 21-year-old woman was critically injured on Wednesday when her father hacked her with a sickle in a suburb of Hyderabad for marrying outside their caste after luring the couple to meet him for buying new clothes, police said.
Madhavi was attacked at around 4pm in Erragadda on the busy Hyderabad-Mumbai highway, suffering serious injuries on her neck and hand. Her husband Billa Navdeep, 24, from Premnagar Colony of Erragadda was injured in his face and neck.
Madhavi, a resident of Vinayaknagar in Hyderabad’s Borabanda area, belongs to the Other Backward Class community and was seeing Sandeep, a Dalit, for five years. Her father, Manohara Chary, did not accept their relationship and a few days ago decided to marry her to her maternal cousin.
Madhavi and Navdeep secretly married at a temple in Alwal near Hyderabad around 10 days ago. Madhavi’s parents accepted the marriage and she started living with her in-laws in Erragadda.
Her parents had been talking to Madhavi over phone for two days, police said. Chary called Madhavi and asked the couple to come to Borabanda, saying he would buy them new clothes. Madhavi and Navdeep were waiting on the main road near a Hero Honda showroom, when Chary parked his motorbike and attacked them.
“He suddenly took out a sickle-like weapon from his back and assaulted Navdeep. When Madhavi tried to stop him, he pushed her down and hacked her, leaving her in a pool of blood. When onlookers rushed to him and tried to stop him, he threatened and fled the spot,” said a police officer who didn’t wish to be named.
{{/usCountry}}“He suddenly took out a sickle-like weapon from his back and assaulted Navdeep. When Madhavi tried to stop him, he pushed her down and hacked her, leaving her in a pool of blood. When onlookers rushed to him and tried to stop him, he threatened and fled the spot,” said a police officer who didn’t wish to be named.
{{/usCountry}}People called the police and took the couple to a nearby nursing home. With Madhavi’s condition turning serious, they took her to a corporate hospital in Somajiguda. The condition of Navdeep is stable.
The incident follows a similar crime in Miryalguda town of Telangana’s Nalgonda district on Friday when an upper caste businessman got his Dalit Christian son-in-law killed by hiring a contract killer for ₹1 crore. He was arrested along with six others on Tuesday.