In the southern state of Andhra Pradesh a 26 year-old IT worker was found strangled at home. Police say that it was a rare “honor killing.” The people who are responsible for this deceitful act are her mother and father. How could these parents kill their own daughter? The simple answer to this question is that she married someone against her parents’ wishes, and they believed that he was from an unsuitable community.

She married another IT professional on the 21^st of February this past year. The couple married in Hyderabad, and her parents took them back to Guntar with the promise to have a traditional ceremony. This is just one example showing that although India is the 9^th most intelligent country in the world, there are still some aspects about India that are old-fashioned and remnant of the days when the caste system and arranged marriages were widely popular.

Superintendent of Guntar police, Gopinath Jatti, told BBC Hindi’s Imran Qureshi, “The parents have confessed to the crime. They strangled her with her chunri [scarf] by tying it to the bed post in their house.” Jatti went on to say, “When the pressure built up, the girl informed her parents that she was in love with her friend. She tried to convince them but they obviously weren’t. The murder got to be known when the friends of the bridegroom got suspicious and went to the woman’s house.” Kiran Kumar, the bridegroom, tried to call his bride. When she didn’t answer, he went to her house, broke down her door, and found her murdered on the bed.

Officials told BBC News that honor killings are rare in this part of India, and the parents of the young IT worker have yet to comment publicly about the entire situation.

Another account occurred in September of 2013 when Nidhi and Dharmender were allegedly killed by Nidhi’s family, and this was pronounced an honor crime. Their story is similar to the previous one. Two people from different communities had fallen in love and planned to get married. Nidhi’s family did not approve of this, so they beat Nidhi to death and dismembered Dharmender while he was alive. At the funeral, there was no remorse on the faces of those who killed Nidhi and Dharmender. Out of the four who were arrested, Nidhi’s uncle looked dazed and bewildered and said, “It was the right thing to do. We had to set an example.” Nidhi’s mother was another person who was arrested, and she showed no remorse for being a partaker in the murder of her own daughter.

At the trials of some of these murders, Judges Markandeya Katju and Gyan Sudha Mishra said:

“There is nothing honourable in honour killing or other atrocities and, in fact, it is nothing but barbaric and shameful murder.”

In the villages and rural areas, arranged marriages are widely popular and disruptions in this trend are causing parents to resort to violence in order to preserve traditions and family “honor”. While it is debatable whether or not parents deserve a say in who their children marry, there is no instance where murdering is justified to punish kids for going against their will. Killing a young person for falling in love with someone from an “unsuitable community” is a crime nonetheless, and those who commit these crimes are the real ones who deserve punishment.

[Image Attribute: kdinuraj via Compfight cc]