Dalit youth killed in public for marrying upper caste Hindu girl
Chennai : In a horrifying caste murder (honour killing) in Tamil Nadu, a Dalit youth was hacked to death and his upper caste wife injured by an armed gang in public in Tirupur, a district adjoining the textile city of Coimbatore, on Sunday afternoon. The murder, carried out by mercenaries at the behest of the girl’s family, in a busy locality, was captured on a CCTV camera installed in the vicinity. Footage showed the three assailants casually driving away on a motorcycle after committing the murder even as dozens of people watched in horror.
The youth Shankar (22), a final year engineering college student in Coimbatore district, had married Kousalya (19), who belongs to the Thevar community – a dominant OBC community in southern Tamil Nadu. The girl had joined the engineering college last year and fell in love with Shankar. The two married eight months ago and she dropped out of college to take up a job in a garment unit in Tirupur to support her husband’s studies.
Her family was opposed to the marriage and when efforts to separate them failed, they decided to eliminate the couple. Accordingly, hirelings accosted the young couple just as they were about to cross a road and hacked them. While Shankar died on the way to hospital, Kousalya sustained bleeding injuries and is recuperating at the Coimbatore Medical College Hospital.
On Monday, her father Chinnasamy surrendered before a Judicial Magistrate in Nilakottai in south Tamil Nadu in connection with the murder and was remanded in jail. Chinnasamy claimed that he was surrendering as he learnt the police suspected his involvement in the murder.
“We have formed six teams to nab the accused. Two suspects have been detained,” said Tirupur Superintendent of Police Saroj Kumar Thakur.
Incidentally, this is the third sensational caste-related death of a Dalit for falling in love with an upper caste girl in western Tamil Nadu in the last three years. In 2013, Ilavarasan, a Dalit youth who had married a Vanniyar community girl, was found dead near a railway track in Dharmapuri district soon after his wife separated from him under pressure from her community leaders. Last year, a Dalit youth, Gokulraj, was murdered in Namakkal district for falling in love with a Gounder community girl.
Meanwhile, the National Human Rights Commission on Monday issued a notice to the Tamil Nadu Chief Secretary and Director General of Police calling for a report in the matter within four weeks. The Commission observed that the incident raises serious questions relating to the safety of the persons belonging to lower castes in the country. “In this case, the man belonged to a Scheduled Caste and had married an upper caste Hindu girl. The matter was in the knowledge of the police but it failed to provide them adequate security,” the NHRC said.
