Indian police have arrested and charged a man with decapitating his own teenage daughter out of anger over her relationship with another man he didn’t like, BBC News reported Thursday, in what appears to be the latest gruesome case of so-called “honor killings”. in the Asian nation Police in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh said Sarvesh Kumar was arrested walking his daughter’s head to the local police station.
BBC News said local police released a video in which Kumar confesses to the crime, explaining that he was furious when he learned about his daughter’s relationship, came home to find her alone, locked her in a room and beheaded her with a sharp object. .
Neighbors reported to police on Wednesday the sight of Kumar apparently carrying his daughter’s head through their Hardoi district after he committed the alleged crime.
Sanjeev Verma / Hindustan Times / Getty
Honor killings are a big problem problem in India, neighboring Pakistan, and other countries where family members – usually women and girls – are attacked and even killed by their relatives for shaming the family. Such crimes are more common in rural communities where age-old traditions and deeply rooted cultural norms still dictate the rules of everyday life.
According to the BBC, while there are no official statistics, hundreds of people are believed to be murdered every year in India by family members because of relationships or marriages that went against the wishes of their parents or other elderly people.
Honor crime is just one aspect of a much wider problem of violence against women and girls that India has grappled with for years. The BBC said statistics compiled by India’s National Crime Records Bureau show that more crimes against women were committed in Uttar Pradesh last year than in any other Indian state.
In March 2020, India hanged four men for the brutal gang rape of a paramedic student in Delhi in 2012. The rape and murder of the 23-year-old woman sparked massive street protests across India and brought global attention to the plight of Indian women. .
But CBS News’ Arshad R. Zargar reported that despite the outbreak of public anger, little has changed. Government data released in September 2020 showing that an average of 87 rapes were reported per day in the previous year – an increase of more than 7% from 2018.
In January, an Indian court ruling that groping a child cannot be considered sexual assault as long as there is no “skin-to-skin contact” or “sexual intent” was widely criticized by rights activists.
The verdict of Bombay Supreme Court Judge Pushpa V. Ganediwala acquitted of wrongdoing a 39-year-old man accused of sexually assaulting a 12-year-old girl in 2016.