Patna: A young couple were dragged out of their home, stabbed to death in full public view and then burnt on the same funeral pyre in a latest incident of bone-chilling “honour killing” in Bihar, sending shock waves in the area.
The blood-curdling incident took place at Kapasia village in southern Bihar’s Auragabad district on Saturday. The police have registered a case against 15 people in connection with the incident but all been absconding.
Police said Neeraj Kumar, 19, and Amrita Kumari, 17, who hailed from the same village and also the same community were seeing each other for the past two years but on Saturday, when she arrived at hishouse, her parents rushed to the scene and asked her to return home but she refused. Witnesses said even as the arguments continued, the girl’s brother suddenly slammed her on the ground and furiously stabbed her multiple times with a sharp-edged vegetable knife. She died immediately on the spot after bleeding profusely.
Reports said after seeing the girl dead, the boy rushed inside his house out of panic and locked himself in a room. “But, the girl’s family members broke open the door and stabbed him to death as well,” local police station in-charge Sujit Kumar said on Sunday.
Soon after the incident, both families carried the bodies to the local cremation site and burnt them on a single pyre. The bodies had burnt nearly 90 per cent when the local police came to know about the incident and pulled the charred bodies out to be sent for an autopsy.
No mercy
“We have registered a case against 15 persons wherein the members from the girl and boy have been named accused,” local inspector general of police Rakesh Rathi told the media on Sunday. He added the police were conducting raids to nab the absconding accused persons.
“We kept on praying for his life but they (girl family) showed no mercy on him and killed him in cold blood right in front of our eyes. We watched all this helplessly. Local villagers too didn’t come for help,” the boy’s father Kishori Singh told the local media.
The slaughter of children for “the sake of honour” is quite common in Bihar. Last year in a similar incident, another two young lovers were strangled and chopped into pieces in the Gaya district, another south Bihar district notorious for “honour killings”.
The lovers had earned the ire of the girl’s family since they belonged to rival castes. While the girl belonged to the influential Yadav caste, the boy - who ran a coaching centre - came from the inferior Dalit community. The girl had fallen in love with the boy while attending the classes run by him.
In another incident, a youth had his private parts chopped off before being stoned to death along with his girlfriend in Bihar’s Patna district. Here too, the pair hailed from upper and lower castes.