At 16, love feels all-consuming.
There’s little more in life that seems more important than time spent with your significant other at this tender age.
And if, try as you might, you can’t convince your parents to let you see more of them, you’ll stop at nothing to find a way – even if you know it will ultimately get you into trouble.
But in the tale of one teenager’s short life – it’s a forbidden outing with her boyfriend that led to her brutal murder.
Murder at the hands of the people who gave her life.
Just nights after she told her older sister she was leaving the house to attend the party of her boyfriend, who she was dating against her family’s wishes, she returned home to a brutal beating by her father, who then, enlisting the help of a local butcher, murdered her in cold blood.
Weeks later, her mutilated body was found strewn across the road on the edge of her town.
She had been decapitated, her face completely disfigured by acid, and one of her arms cut off.
A few short weeks earlier, her father had played the role of concerned parent – reporting her missing in December. The report claimed he feared she had been abducted.
“We went to several places and searched our relatives’ homes but to no avail,” he said in a missing person’s submission. “She could have been abducted while going to meet a friend on the evening of December 28”.
But when her body was found and investigations were conducted, the family’s story came undone.
Top Comments
Sadly honour killings are extremely common. They just don’t get reported unless it happens in places like the US or UK which is why a lot of these parents that have sent their kids for arranged marriages send them “home” with the threat that you either marry who we want or face the consequences (ie: die). And they do it in the most grizzly, painful ways possible to make a statement to others. There is a lot of corruption and blind eyes being turned in regards to these crimes often. I have studied this sort of crime and its absolutely horrific. For those interested (and the author) I’d recommend reading shame (and daughters of shame) by jasvinder sangheera.
The government should enforce its laws all over the country.
Unfortunately with these sorts of things in these places, it’s not so simple. There’s a great deal of corruption
Enforcing laws against corruption is happening around the world. Join Transparency International and give your support. India wants to be a first world country, they need to fix alot of human rights things first. Having money is not enough.