A Girl Was Murdered By Her Own Family For Marrying In The Same Gotra. It’s 2020 And Honour Killings Still Plague Our Society
When it comes to marriages, Indian culture is really twisted. Here, it’s not about two people choosing their own partner and for love. Marriages in India are seldom about love, they’re about trading, sometimes for image-building and sometimes a business deal. Several Indian parents see their children as Systematic Investment Plans and wait for the year this will give them the returns by marrying someone of their choice. They will carefully pick out a partner – keeping in mind the caste, native, financial background and everything so their community can be proud of them. For them, their community’s validation is far more important than their child’s happiness.
And you think the worse that can happen is that when you have a partner of your own choosing, your parents will get upset and not talk to you for a while. And then, it will be okay. Here’s a reality check. The worse (also most likely thing) that can happen is that you will get killed by your own family. So it’s really a choice between life and love, except nobody thinks their own parents are capable of making you choose between these two things.
We are in 2020 but honour killings are still big in our country and this recent incident proves just that. A family strangled their 25-year-old daughter Sheetal Chaudhary and drove with her body for 80 km from East Delhi to Sikandrabad, UP. There, they disposed her body in a canal like it was trash. All this because she had secretly married her boyfriend, Ankit Bhati who belonged to the same gotra as her.
Sheetal’s parents Ravinder and Suman, two paternal uncles, Sanjay and Om Prakash, and two cousins, Ankit and Parvesh were arrested in connection with the kidnapping and murder. It was Sheetal’s husband Ankit Bhati who suspected that something is wrong, when he couldn’t get in touch with her for three days straight. Which is why, he registered a kidnapping case at the New Ashok Nagar police station. As reported by Indian Express, a police officer said, “The two secretly got married in October but continued staying with their respective families. On January 30, Chaudhary told her parents and the rest of the family about the marriage, and they allegedly strangled her.”
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They took two cars to dispose her body and though initially the family stayed resolutely quiet, denying the allegations, one of them broke down and revealed all the details. “Her parents were in a Wagon-R with her body, which was kept upright in the rear seat, and the other car with the rest of the relatives followed,” said an officer.
Ankit Bhati and Sheetal Choudhary dated for three years before tying the knot. In fact, both their families have dairy businesses and are neighbours. When she went missing, Bhati and his relatives kept asking her family of her whereabouts and when her relative said ‘hogi toh milegi na ladki’, they knew something was off.
Meanwhile, Delhi police checked with the Aligarh police and they confirmed that a body was found in the canal. The body was carried from Sikandrabad to Aligarh with the flow of the water. But they had cremated her after doing a post-mortem since they couldn’t identify her. They however kept aside her belongings, based on which Bhati could identify her.
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ALSO READ: The World Is Talking About This Caste-Based Killing Incident In India. When Will This Stop?
The family of six has been arrested and sent to Tihar jail in judicial custody. But none of this will bring back Sheetal who they killed just because she married someone in the same gotra. Why are these things bigger than human life in India? It’s something I fail to understand.
