Chennai: A 23-year-old Dalit was hacked to death and his wife from an upper caste mercilessly attacked in Tamil Nadu’s Tirupur.
The suspected case of honor killing took place in a busy market. While a number of people were witness to the attack, no one interfered.
The incident was captured on a CCTV camera.
In the footage, three men are seen dragging the Dalit onto a pavement next to a busy road and beating him with weapons. When at last he stopped moving, the men launched an attack on the woman, hitting her repeatedly till she fell on the ground.
The attackers then escaped on a motorcycle, without any apparent concern about being identified later, reports ndtv.com
V Sankar, a third year engineering student, had married Kausalya, 19, eight months ago. The parents of the woman, who are from an upper caste, allegedly opposed the marriage.
Sankar’s father Velu Samy said, “We thought her parents would accept them but it has ended in this bloody tragedy. We’ve lost him”.
The Tripur police have formed five teams and launched a massive manhunt to find the attackers. “There could be up to five men in this operation. Only when we catch them we would be able to get the real motive,” said a police officer who is part of the investigation.
This is the third such incident in Tamil Nadu in the last five years.
In July 2013, a Dalit man who had married an upper caste woman was found dead on a railway track in Dharmapuri district. Last year, another young man who was found talking to an upper caste woman was abducted and later found dead in Namakkal district.