Tamil Nadu: Man kills 3 in family, dies by suicide after daughter marries inter-caste

Mangalore Today News Network / NDTV

Chennai, Feb 18, 2022: Upset over his daughter marrying a man from a Scheduled Caste, a man in Tamil Nadu’s Nagapattinam district allegedly killed his wife and two daughters, including a minor, and then died by suicide, police have said.

 

G Jawahar, police superintendent of Nagapattinam district, said Lakshmanan, who ran a tea shop, was furious over his elder daughter marrying a man from a Scheduled Caste. The daughter, who now lives with her husband, is safe.

Police said the investigation into the gruesome incident is on.

Caste discrimation and attacks by relatives over inter-caste marriages continues to be prevalent in some rural pockets of Tamil Nadu.

In 2016, a young man from a Scheduled Caste was murdered in broad daylight at Udumalpet in Tamil Nadu’s Tiruppur district by goons allegedly hired by the family of his upper caste Hindu wife.

The killers had hacked V Shankar, a 23-year-old engineering student, to death and left his wife Kausalya seriously injured.

A sessions court had sentenced six people, including Kausalya’s father Chinnaswamy, to death.

Later, in 2020, a Madras High Court acquitted the woman’s father and commuted the death sentence awarded to the others to life imprisonment.

In at least two other incidents, two Scheduled Caste men were found dead on railway tracks after they married women from upper castes.