Hyderabad: After Friday’s honour killing of a Dalit youth who had married a woman from an 'upper' caste in Miryalaguda town, Nalgonda district, police arrested her father and uncle on Saturday.
Pranay Kumar was killed in broad daylight in front of his wife, Amrutha, when they had gone to a private hospital for a check-up; she is pregnant.
After attacking and killing him with sharp-edged weapons, the killers escaped in a car. However, a special police team tracked and arrested Maruti Rao and his brother Shravan Kumar.
Amrutha, who is in deep shock, said she had no doubt that her own father was responsible for the incident. “Let him be my father but I want him to be hanged for killing my husband. They have done it because Pranay loved me and married me,” she screamed when local MP G Sukhinder Reddy and a few others visited her at hospital. Crying inconsolably, she insisted on seeing the body of her husband.
“If I had not come to hospital my husband would be alive today”, she said. “When we were going together [to the hospital] somebody hit him. When he fell down, they killed him. I could not see who the killer was. But my father was planning to kill him and he was keeping an eye on our movements for a long time. My mother had warned [us] about his intentions”, Amrutha said.
“I had informed my mother that I was pregnant and she used to call me from time to time to inquire about my heath. But my father was [pressuring] me to abort the child,” Amrutha told media.
She said even after losing her husband she had no intention of going back to her parents’ house.
The incident has sparked outrage in the town and shops remain closed as a mark of protest on the call of Dalit organisations. Protesters took out processions and held demonstrations demanding stringent action against the culprits. Family members and protesters held sit-ins. As tempers were running high the police has strengthened security in Miryalaguda. Officials wanted Pranay’s cremation to be done at the earliest but it was delayed as the victim’s brother was to return from Ukraine.
Pranay’s father, Bala Swamy, said Pranay and Amrutha's wedding had taken place with the blessings of her mother. “We were not aware of this marriage. After wedding when the threats continued we had asked them to take back the girl. But now they killed my son”, he said.
Twenty-four-year-old Pranay and Amrutha had been friends since their school days and had married in an Arya Samaj institution in Hyderabad last January. Her family was furious over the wedding.
