Rajasthan: Father allegedly kills 18-year-old woman for live-in relationship with Dalit man
Last month, the couple had approached the Rajasthan High Court, which on February 26 instructed the police to provide security cover to them.
An 18-year-old woman in Rajasthan’s Dausa district was allegedly murdered by her father who opposed her live-in relationship with a Dalit man, The Indian Express reported on Thursday, citing the police.
Last month, the couple – 18-year-old Pinki Saini and 24-year-old Roshan Mahawar – had approached the Rajasthan High Court, which on February 26 instructed the police to provide security cover to them. The couple’s advocates called the murder “gross negligence” that could not prevented despite a court order. The police said that Saini was abducted from the couple’s home in Dausa on March 1 after they arrived from Jaipur.
Dausa Superintendent of Police Anil Kumar said that Saini got married on February 16, and ran away with Mahawar on February 21. “On February 26, both appeared before the Rajasthan High Court and the court ordered that they be provided protection by the local police and taken wherever they wanted to go,” Kumar told The Indian Express. “The local police had taken them to Jaipur where they wanted to stay. On March 1, the two of them came to Dausa at the house of Mahawar from where the woman’s family members took her away forcibly.”
The police officer said that a case was registered against the woman’s family after they took her away, and charges of murder were imposed against the woman’s father, Shankar Lal Saini. The father confessed to murdering the woman on Wednesday, and the body was found at his house, the police said, according to The Indian Express. The police added that her death seemed to have been caused due to strangulation, and that they were investigating the involvement of more people.
On March 1, after the woman was abducted, Mahawar’s family registered a first information report naming 11 people, including Pinki Saini’s father, and other relatives.
The FIR includes charges of criminal intimidation, theft, abduction, and sections of the Scheduled Caste/Scheduled Tribe Act. Mahawar’s family alleged that the woman’s father and others used casteist slurs against them, damaged their home, and stole Rs 1.2 lakh along with Pinki Saini’s abduction.