Man kills daughter over inter-caste relationship in Delhi

NEW DELHI: It was love at first sight for Amrita and Shubham (names have been changed to protect identities). They were of the same age and lived in the same neighbourhood in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur. Amrita, a Class XII student, met Shubham on the way to school and after classes too. However, their friendship was not acceptable to their families because they were from different castes.
Amrita’s family belonged to the Nai caste while the boy was from the Mallah community.In spite of the opposition, Amrita and Shubham’s love only grew deeper. Rattled by this, the girl’s family sent her to Delhi so that she would be far from the boy and not “ruin the family’s prestige in society”. Amrita’s father also had a glass business in Delhi and thought she would be “in check” there.
However, the two proved inseparable. Amrita, aged around 20, began to live in Prem Nagar in northwest Delhi with her brother, but kept in touch with Shubham over the phone. The brother apparently kept updating the family about how Amrita was “not ready to give up” on the boy.
Amrita tried convincing her parents and her brother to let her go back to Shubham, but the father was strongly opposed to the alliance. The continued phone calls and the audio and video messages left him furious. A few days ago, Amrita’s father suspected that she was about to elope with the boy and get married against the wishes of the family and confronted her. The argument turned nasty and the father decided to kill his daughter.
He scouted for an isolated place in Kanjhawala in northwest Delhi. On Sunday evening, he asked her to accompany him for a “final discussion” on the issue and took her to a field in Kanjhawala. Once there, he asked her if she would change her mind. The moment she said no, the father whipped out a paper cutter and slit her throat. As she gasped for breath, he made further incisions in her belly. He then sat there and watched her die. When she stopped responding and had bled enough, he got up and left the spot.
Around 8.53pm on Sunday, the police control room was informed about a girl’s body lying in a field near Chandpur Road. According to police, the body had deep injuries on the neck and abdomen. An FIR was registered and the duo of inspectors Ishwar Singh and Dharmender was asked to investigate the murder. “It was a blind case,” said DCP Guriqbal Singh Sidhu. “But the first breakthrough came from the analysis of the CCTV footage which showed a cab in the area. The footage also showed two passengers in the cab.”
Local informers were roped in and technical surveillance was mounted. The investigators managed to trace the cab driver through the vehicle’s registration number. The driver said he had dropped a woman and a man at the place of incident. The details given by the driver, including the number used to book the cab, helped the cops identify the girl and the family. The girl’s father was found missing and became a suspect. He had, in any case, been spotted around the scene of crime, the cops said.
The accused, aged 46, was eventually tracked through technical surveillance and human intelligence. “The suspect was planning to flee Delhi and go to Bihar. However, he was nabbed within 12 hours of the murder being reported,” said a senior officer.
Ravindra Yadav, special commissioner (law and order), appreciated the efforts made by the investigative team in the quick disposal of the case. A chargesheet will be filed at the earliest, he said. Police have recovered the weapon of offence, the paper cutter.