http://timesofindia
Woman killed by relatives in TN's Udumalpet for marrying Dalit
M Gunasekaran, TNN 6 November 2009, 02:04am IST
CHENNAI: In a gruesome honour killing, a 21-year-old woman was
brutally murdered by her father and relatives in Tirupur district of
western Tamil
Nadu on Wednesday.
Sripriya, who belonged to the backward Kallar community, had fallen
love with a Dalit youth, A Badhrakali, while doing an internship to
get her B.Ed. The couple eloped and got married in Salem on September
29.
Police and Badhrakali's relatives said that Sripriya's father,
Srinivasan, and two relatives came to Madathukulam, near Udumalpet, on
Wednesday. The newly-wed couple was staying with Badhrakali's sister
in Madathukulam.
Srinivasan asked Sripriya to come to Tiruchi to visit her mother, who,
he said, was ill. "She refused and told them that she would decide
after her husband returned home. The trio then left," Badhrakali's
brother-in-law, Chandrasekar, said.
"After some time, the two relatives returned. When my wife, Rani, and
a neighbour questioned them, one man threatened them with a knife
while the other stabbed Sripriya," said Chandrasekar. Sripriya
received injuries to her neck, breasts and abdomen and died.
Udumalpet deputy superintendent of police C Raja said Srinivasan (65),
his nephew Asaithambi alias Rajkannan (27) and Pannadi (30) had been
arrested on Thursday for murdering Sripriya. They were booked under
Section 302 of the IPC. "The relationship between Sripriya and her
parents was strained ever since the inter-caste marriage. Preliminary
investigations revealed that the trio wanted to kill Badhrakali but he
was not at home," Raja said.
Sripriya and Badhrakali fell in love last year while interning at a
school close to his village of Azhagapuri, near Palani. Badhrakali's
relatives said they had been receiving threats ever since the couple
eloped.
Fearing a threat to their lives, the couple approached the Dindigul
police and submitted a complaint at the All-Women's Police Station in
Palani on October 5. The next day, Srinivasan and his relatives were
summoned to the police station. After hours of discussion, Sripriya
refused to leave Badhrakali. The angry parents then gave a written
undertaking disowning her and saying that they would no longer be in
touch with her.
"I spoke to Sripriya on the phone a couple of minutes before she was
murdered. She was under the impression that her father had a change of
heart. We would have been more careful if we had suspected their
motive," Chandrasekar said.
The girl's body was handed over to Badhrakali's family after the
post-mortem at the Udumalpet government hospital.
"Stabbing the breasts is a brutal way of protecting the honour of the
caste," said A Kathir, executive director of Evidence, an NGO working
in the areas of caste-based discrimination and violence.
Kathir, who visited Madathukulam and made enquiries, claimed that this
was the seventh honour killing in Tamil Nadu in the last two years.
"Torture and killing in the name of protecting the pride of the caste
or family are recorded as murder and not as honour killings," he said.
Last year, Dalit youth A Sivaji of Haridwaramangalam in Tiruvarur
district was killed by the relatives of his caste Hindu wife, Lakshmi,
who had married him against their wishes. He was kidnapped from his
home by an armed gang and then murdered. Lakshmi continued to live
with her in-laws and took her case to the National Human Rights
Commission. Following this, the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court
had directed the police to invoke penal provisions under the SC and ST
(Prevention of Atrocities) Act against the accused.
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