In India, women are still being killed because they risk their sexual freedom or their freedom to choose their own partner.
The video of a father holding the severed head of his daughter as he casually walked down the street sent shock waves on Thursday, just four days before International Women’s Day.
Sarvesh Kumar, from the Pandetara village in Uttar Pradesh of Hardoi, thought it appropriate to behead his 17-year-old daughter because of an alleged love affair with a man he does not approve of. In the video, he is matter. There is no guilt or sadness, just a practical account of the events.
After catching his daughter in a compromise with a man two days earlier, he promised not to touch food or water before he could kill the two. In the video, he explains that he could not find the man, and only managed to kill his daughter. “I locked the door and did,” he says in Hindi.
The clip was largely removed from social media platforms due to its graphic content.
At one point in the video, he puts his severed head on the ground. The ponytail on the girl’s head hangs limply; her eyes are closed. “I left the body in the house,” Kumar told the man who filmed the video. He gives the name of his daughter and the name of the man with whom she was allegedly in a relationship. He proudly explains how he killed her, and why. The man interrupts the narration twice to answer phone calls. He cooperates with the police when they search him, ensuring that ‘there is no weapon on me’.
Incidents like this are all too common in India, especially in patriarchal heartlands like Uttar Pradesh. Many women who choose to pursue relationships against their family’s wishes or outside of their religion or community run the fatal consequences of their male relatives. Honor, in our society, is linked to the chastity of a woman, and any deviation is severely punished.
In January, a 17-year-old girl and her 19-year-old boyfriend were allegedly killed by the girl’s relatives in the Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh. The following month, the IANS news agency reported that another woman had been burned alive in the state of Gorakhpur because of her relationship with a Muslim man. A few days later, a man stabbed his brother-in-law for marrying his sister in Meerut.
And although their partner carries a bit of weight, studies have found that it is the women and girls who carry the maximum fine of their families.
A 2016 report by the International Journal of Recent Scientific Research analyzed 50 honor deaths in Uttar Pradesh and found that girls and women died in more than half of the cases. In contrast, boys and men were killed in less than a quarter of the cases. It also found that most murders were directed at younger women between the ages of 11-20 years.
To combat the epidemic of honor killings, you need to understand what makes these killings unique. It differs from ordinary and psychopathic murders, serial murders, passion crimes, revenge murders and domestic violence, ”the study found, adding that these acts are due to predetermined norms and cultures in a patriarchal society, where honor is equated with the way women behave .
The U.S. State Department’s 2019 human rights report found that honor killings “are a problem, especially in Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana.” Uttar Pradesh in particular topped the list of Indian states with the most crimes against women in 2019, according to the most recent report by the National Crime Records Bureau.
But in general, honor killings in India are severely underreported.
According to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), as many as 5,000 women and girls are victims of honor killings each year, although some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) estimate that the figure could be as high as 20,000.
Although these crimes are considered murders in India, they are not yet a deterrent to too many. Honor killings often involve the silent involvement of family members and surrounding communities, and now the Hardoi case serves as a strong and sobering reminder of why India is still one of the most dangerous countries for women.