CHENNAI: Tamil Nadu on Wednesday witnessed yet another incident of a woman being hacked to death by a stalker, echoing the brutal murder of an Infosys techie two months ago.
N Francina, a 24-year-old schoolteacher, was hacked to death by J Keegan while she was praying in a church in Thoothukudi before beginning her school day.
The 53-year-old assailant subsequently was found to have hanged himself in his house by the police, who said he had stalked Francina for six months before attacking her.
This comes just a day after a 19-year-old student, Sonali, was beaten to death by a youth, Udayakumar, who claimed to have been in a relationship with her — a claim denied by her friends and family.
The similarities between the motives of the attackers in both the cases — claims of being in love with the victims and then attacking them because the women in question did not respond — is eerily similar to the motives of Ramkumar, the man who was arrested for the murder of the Infosys techie, S Swathi, in June.
Swathi’s murder garnered attention across India and put the focus on Tamil Nadu which, despite begin comparatively safer for women, has seen a spate of hackings recently. In the Infosys techie’s case, the accused killed her on a platform in one of Chennai’s main railway stations — a stone’s throw away from a police station — and in front of witnesses, none of whom tried to help her.
{{/usCountry}}Swathi’s murder garnered attention across India and put the focus on Tamil Nadu which, despite begin comparatively safer for women, has seen a spate of hackings recently. In the Infosys techie’s case, the accused killed her on a platform in one of Chennai’s main railway stations — a stone’s throw away from a police station — and in front of witnesses, none of whom tried to help her.
{{/usCountry}}Why hacking is an increasingly common method of murder is unknown, though the affordability and the commonplace nature of the ‘aruval’ — the Tamil term for an agricultural tool that is a cross between a machete and a sickle — is a big factor. Equally important is the question of why so many young men are articulating their desires towards women in such a violent manner, physical and otherwise.