In villages, caste matters; no remorse, says kin
BHOPAL: 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-monthold 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.
“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 Sameer Yadav, additional superintendent of police, Sehore. 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. On Friday, unable to bear the burden of his wife and child’s death, the man died by suicide.
The man’s paternal uncle, Mukesh Vishawakarma, 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.”
“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.