Shankar Social Justice Trust, run by another honour killing victim’s widow in Tamil Nadu, has come out in her support.
Amrita Varshini, 24, widow of 25-year-old Pranay who was killed by her father and real estate businessman T. Maruti Rao at Miryalaguda of Nalgonda district in Telangana last Sunday, is to fight for a separate law to ensure protection to the inter-caste married couples in the country. Amrita had married Perumalla Pranay, a Dalit Christian from the same town, in January this year.
Amrita shared this with Kousalya who too lost her husband, Shankar, two years ago in Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu when the latter called on her at Miryalaguda on Friday. Kousalya runs a forum, Shankar Social Justice Trust, since 2016 to extend support and solidarity with the persons who fall victims to caste violence or honour killings.
Both Amrita and Kousalya, after an hour-long discussion, told the media that they would like to fight for securing protection to inter-caste couples who are in danger from either side of their parents. “The police are not showing any interest in protecting the couples with inter-caste backgrounds,” said Amrita. She also demanded that her late husband Pranay’s statue should be erected in Miryalaguda town.
A member of the trust who accompanied Kousalya said that Tamil Nadu and Bihar are notorious for honour killings targeting mostly the Dalit youth. Of late, the trend is spreading to other states where the upper caste parents of girls are out to kill the spouses of their daughters. The trust members said that the police are treating casually the complaints from the couples and not providing enough protection to them.
The killing of Pranay has created ripples not only in Telangana but also across the country as scores of people condemned the incident and lent support to Amrita, now five-months pregnant. Her father Maruti Rao, a Bania leader in the city, had hired “supari killer” Subhash Sharma from Samastipur in Bihar and other locals for a sum of Rs 1 crore and paid Rs 15 lakh as advance.
The police have arrested all the seven accused in the case – Maruti Rao, his brother Sravan, hired killers Sharma, Abdul Bari, Asghar Ali, local Congress leader Abdul Karim and Rao’s driver Siva – and sent them to two weeks’ judicial custody. Bari and Ali are accused and underwent jail term in Gujarat former Home minister Haren Pandya’s murder case and have connections with Indian Mujahideen.
Bari, who served his jail term, is a resident of Nalgonda town and was involved in real estate mafia for some time. Two years ago, Bari and Ali had kidnapped Maruti Rao to settle a land dispute in Miryalaguda town. But Rao befriended with his kidnappers for the sake of his future land deals, mostly illegal layouts grabbing government lands. Bari and Ali in turn hired Sharma to carry out the murder.
Maruti Rao has confessed to the Nalgonda police that he eliminated Pranay because he couldn’t digest the fact that he had been after Amrita since the age of 14 years when they were in the 9th standard. Later, they pursued their BTech from a private college in Hyderabad and eloped and married in a Arya Samaj temple in January this year.
The killing of Pranay was followed by another honour attack in the heart of Hyderabad city on Thursday as Manohara Chary, a goldsmith, attacked with a sickle his daughter Madhavi, 24, and her husband, Sandeep, 25, a Dalit. Madhavi sustained severe injuries and went into coma, but is now out of danger.
Telangana Director-General of Police Mahender Reddy took note of these along with a couple of other incidents where parents of girls, mostly upper castes or OBCs attacked the newly-wed Dalit youth and issued instructions to the police stations to pay attention to the complaints made by the couples and provide protection to them.