New Delhi: A 14-year-old boy and three adult members of his family in an Uttar Pradesh village killed their 15-year-old sister and daughter, allegedly because they found out that she spoke to a Dalit boy over the phone, Indian Express has reported.
The newspaper has reported that the incident took place on August 25 and that the boy surrendered at the police station in a village in Kaushambi the next day. Police, upon reaching the house, found the girl’s body there.
Police have taken the minor into custody and also arrested his elder brother (19), mother (45) and father (48) over their involvement in the murder. The three, said police, have confessed to the crime. The girl was allegedly searched for a phone and when it was found on her, she was beaten up severely before being struck with an axe and a hammer by her brothers.
The Kaushambi superintendent of police Brijesh Kumar Srivastava said that the minor boy was going to be produced before a juvenile justice board.
The family belong to an Other Backward Class community and had been opposed to the deceased girl’s relationship with a Dalit boy. The Express report says that they had even made her stay at a relative’s house in New Delhi so that she would stop meeting the boy.
This is not the only incident of brutal violence involving casteism in India in the last few days.
In Madhya Pradesh’s Sagar district, a Dalit teenager was beaten to death by a mob over a sexual harassment case filed by his sister in 2019. His sister was beaten and his mother was stripped naked.
On August 27, four Dalit men were hanged upside down from a tree and beaten up in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district on suspicion of theft.
