Dalit Caste Apartheid in India is Alive and Well

[RiazHaq]

April 14 marks the birthday of India's Dalit leader Dr. Ambedkar credted with writing the Indian Constitution. Unfortunately for his people, the constitution has not made much of a dent in the continuing oppression and slavery of Dalits in India.

Over 250 million people are victims of caste-based discrimination and segregation in India. They live miserable lives, shunned by much of society because of their ranks as untouchables or Dalits at the bottom of a rigid caste system in Hindu India. Dalits are discriminated against, denied access to land, forced to work in slave-like conditions, and routinely abused, even killed, at the hands of the police and of higher-caste groups that enjoy the state's protection, according to Human Rights Watch.

In what has been called Asia's hidden apartheid, entire villages in many Indian states remain completely segregated by caste. Caste-based abuse is also found in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Japan, and several African states.

In support of its assertions of Dalit abuse in India, the Human Rights Watch has documented the following abuses:

* Over 100,000 cases of rape, murder, arson, and other atrocities against Dalits are reported in India each year. Given that Dalits are both reluctant and unable (for lack of police cooperation) to report crimes against themselves, the actual number of abuses is presumably much higher.

* India's own agencies have reported that these cases are typically related to attempts by Dalits to defy the social order, or demand minimum wages and their basic human rights. Many of the atrocities are committed by the police. Even perpetrators of large-scale massacres have escaped prosecution.

* An estimated forty million people in India, among them fifteen million children, are bonded laborers, working in slave-like conditions in order to pay off a debt. A majority of them are Dalits.

* According to government statistics, an estimated one million Dalits are manual scavengers who clear feces from public and private latrines and dispose of dead animals; unofficial estimates are much higher.

* The sexual slavery of Dalit girls and women continues to receive religious sanction. Under the devadasi system, thousands of Dalit girls in India's southern states are ceremoniously dedicated or married to a deity or to a temple. Once dedicated, they are unable to marry, forced to become prostitutes for upper-caste community members, and eventually auctioned into an urban brothel.

Although there are laws in India to deal with caste-related problems of bonded labor, manual scavenging, devadasi, and other atrocities against Dalit community members, the reality is that such laws are widely ignored by the law-enforcement agencies and the perpetrators.

The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) now includes discrimination based on caste. Dating back to 1969, the ICERD convention has been ratified by 173 countries, including India. Despite this, and despite the United Nations Sub-Commission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights reiterating that discrimination based on work and descent is a form of racial discrimination, the Indian government's stand on this issue has remained the same: caste is not race.

Ms. Navi Pillay, the South African judge who became the United Nations high commissioner for human rights last year, recently told Barbara Crossette of the Nation a story about a group of women who came to her in Geneva recently with a brick from a latrine they had torn down in protest against being forced to carry away human excrement in their bare hands. They wanted to make the point that despite India's frequent assertions that untouchables," who call themselves Dalits ("broken people"), were no longer condemned by birth to do this job, there were still tens of thousands of such latrines in the country, and the ******, soul-destroying work continues.

Judge Pillay, a South African citizen of Indian descent, now wants to force the issue of caste the UN. "This is the year 2009, and people have been talking about caste oppression for more than a hundred years," Pillay says. "It's time to move on this issue."

Caste is now on notice: the UN has failed, she said, to educate people and change mindsets to combat the taint of caste. "How long is the cycle going to go on where those who can do something about it say, We can't, because it's the people, it's their tradition; we have to go slowly.

"Slavery and apartheid could be removed, so now [caste] can be removed through an international expression of outrage."

Haq's Musings: Dalit Victims of Apartheid in India

 

[RiazHaq]

If major civilisations make contributions to world history, then the Indian civilisation's contributions include caste, caste discrimination, caste segregation, and caste-motivated brutality; the anniversary of Dr. B. R. Ambedkar's birth, April 14, provides an occasion to look at some of the ways governments respond to caste discrimination.

It appears too, that wherever substantial numbers of people of Indian descent settle, caste discrimination appears. Even the British House of Lords was sufficiently exercised about caste discrimination in the United Kingdom to debate it for specific proscription when the new Equality Bill, now the Equality Act 2010, recently came before them. Although this time the House of Lords did not include caste specifically, the government's earlier statement that the Equality and Human Rights Commission had been asked to research the issue drew the peers' rebuke that the Commission in fact said they had not been asked to do the relevant research; the government were also accused of consulting only with upper-caste groups of British Hindus.

My former tutor, a distinguished British professor of philosophy, would not have been surprised by the government's reluctance to include caste in its anti-discrimination laws. I recall his saying, “The British and the Indian ruling classes understood one another perfectly.” His father had been in the Indian Army between the wars, and he himself only rarely revealed how much he knew about India.

Another British friend told me once of an involvement he had had with a girl at his college. Well into the relationship she suddenly told him she would never marry him, as he was of a low caste. They had parents from the same region of India, they spoke the same South Asian language, and they were both young Britons. But she drew the shadow line.

Many apartheids

I recall too, listening to an acquaintance in the Oriental Plaza in Johannesburg as he savaged the now-extinct apartheid régime, raising his voice for the benefit of a couple of stone-faced Afrikaner huisvrouwen who were browsing along the shelves. The young man's aunt, the shop manager, said quietly, “We have our own apartheid, with caste and religion and family.” That reminded me of an earlier conversation with a relative, in which I remarked that in some industrialised countries it could be difficult to tell people's class or occupation from their dress, manner, or speech, especially outside working hours. My relative froze, terrified that his children, destined for U.S. doctorates and gadget-filled mortgages in acceptably white-majority American suburbs, would get involved with ‘unsuitable' people during their studies abroad. That particular relative might have problems if asked whether President Obama's daughters were ‘unsuitable'.

The Government of India, for its part, tries to prevent international discussion of caste. At the UN World Conference Against Racism in Durban in 2001, Indian representatives insisted that caste is not race, that India has legislated against caste discrimination, and that caste as an internal matter must not be discussed at such conferences. The conference adopted the phrase “discrimination based on work and descent.”

India's intransigence, however, continues. In response to the Strategic Management Plan prepared for 2010-11 by the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (UNHCHR), the Government of India notes the Plan's references to caste and adds that as the document was not negotiated the Indian mission in Geneva has been instructed to take the matter up with the UNHCHR. The 160-page document contains only three references to caste. One is a general comment that caste is one form of discrimination in the Asia-Pacific region, another is the inclusion of caste among UNHCHR's thematic priorities for the year, and the third is the observation that caste discrimination is endemic in Nepal.

Furthermore, at the 2009 Durban Review Conference, India rejected a comment on descent, saying it “lacked intellectual rigour” and ignored the drafting history of the Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD). The Convention's history, however, shows that when it was first drafted in 1965 India's representative both suggested the term “descent” and said the Convention would apply to scheduled castes. In 2009, India succeeded in getting the term “discrimination based on work and descent” removed from the conference outcome document, though an earlier U.N. statement that caste is covered by CERD presumably still stands.

India's position is at best incoherent. The government's periodic report to CERD for 2006 reconfirms its opposition to any equation of caste and race by saying the Indian Constitution distinguishes between the two, and that race had been included in the Constitution because of the “moral outrage of the world community against racism” after the Second World War. This outrage, however, was not shared at the highest levels of government. A former civil servant has publicly described the way the then External Affairs Minister Y. B. Chavan and an aide violated India's own sanctions against South Africa by allowing Indian trade with the apartheid state through the Bank of Bermuda in the mid-1970s.

Domestically, Indian government statements, including replies to MPs, often list the legislation prohibiting caste discrimination as though that eo ipso proves effective action. A single example serves to undermine that. The National Crime Records Bureau's records for the period 1995-2007 show that under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989, the police registered 441, 424 crimes, but field-survey estimates suggest that the recorded figure is about one third of the actual figure; for Scheduled Tribes it is about one fifth.

Widespread

The proposition that caste is solely an internal matter for India is untenable. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navanethem Pillay, has said publicly that globally, caste discrimination affects 260 million people; about 170 million of them are in India. In contrast to India, Nepal, until 2007 a Hindu state by constitution, regards caste discrimination as indistinguishable from racial discrimination, and has confirmed that it will work through the U.N. to counter caste discrimination; the European Union has made a similar commitment. The pity is therefore all the greater that India is so dismissive of international cooperation and so unwilling to take the lead over what the Prime Minister himself has called a blot on humanity.

The Hindu : Magazine / Issues : Global casteism, a reality

 

[ramu]

Thanks Riaz for being a champion of Indian Dalits. A lot needs doing in this front but some of your facts are way off. But rest assured, India is doing a lot for inclusive growth.

100,000 cases of rape, murder, arson, and other atrocities

This is an standard way to sensationalise figures where you don't mention what the other atrocities may be. They could be nothing more that verbal abuse and that can be qualified as a case !

Next, police do not profile cases based on caste ! So I don't know how you came up with a number 100,000.

 

[RiazHaq]

Thanks Riaz for being a champion of Indian Dalits. A lot needs doing in this front but some of your facts are way off. But rest assured, India is doing a lot for inclusive growth.


This is an standard way to sensationalise figures where you don't mention what the other atrocities may be. They could be nothing more that verbal abuse and that can be qualified as a case !

Next, police do not profile cases based on caste ! So I don't know how you came up with a number 100,000.

These figures are from Human Rights Watch.

HRW: Caste: Asia's Hidden Apartheid

 

[desiman]

im just avoiding this guy now, no use arguing with him

---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 PM ----------

These figures are from Human Rights Watch.

HRW: Caste: Asia's Hidden Apartheid

report date - 1999. Please check it once before posting 10 year old articles. And the Human Rights watch is not a recognized organization. It is an independent private body and is not a UN recognized Human rights group. Its statistics are known to be faked as it replies on heavy apathy to get the donations it needs to survive. Credibility down the drain, case closed

 

[riju78]

im just avoiding this guy now, no use arguing with him

---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 PM ----------



report date - 1999. Please check it once before posting 10 year old articles. And the Human Rights watch is not a recognized organization. It is an independent private body and is not a UN recognized Human rights group. Its statistics are known to be faked as it replies on heavy apathy to get the donations it needs to survive. Credibility down the drain, case closed

maybe he thinks this is year 2000!!! anyways human rights watch website is interesting...just type pakistan in the search box and look at the recent articles

mr.haq as an indian i think its about time u concentrate more on ur own country..let my countrymen deal with our problems..our country is definitely not a paradise neither is pakistan..alli can i say is to be a proud pakistani u dont have to shout i hate india and dig up india's problems...at least post something more recent..like desiman said there is no point in arguing with u....

 

[Hutchroy]

Double Post - Self Deleted

 

[RiazHaq]

im just avoiding this guy now, no use arguing with him

---------- Post added at 11:35 PM ---------- Previous post was at 11:34 PM ----------



report date - 1999. Please check it once before posting 10 year old articles. And the Human Rights watch is not a recognized organization. It is an independent private body and is not a UN recognized Human rights group. Its statistics are known to be faked as it replies on heavy apathy to get the donations it needs to survive. Credibility down the drain, case closed

Will you denounce Judge Pillay too because she is speaking out against the caste apartheid and dalit slavery?

The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed an urgent need to end caste-based discrimination. In an interview with The Nation on 26 October 2009, Navi Pillay, a former judge in South Africa, mentioned the need to create a new international convention that includes the explicit recognition of caste-based discrimination as a human rights violation.
"Slavery and apartheid could be removed, so now [caste] can be removed through an international expression of outrage", she said in the interview. Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), and the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) have all backed Pillay's position.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), the International Dalit Solidarity Network (IDSN), and the National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) have all backed Pillay's position.

Recently, Pillay was visited by a group of women who gave her a brick from a latrine where Dalits are forced to clean toilets with their bare hands. There are approximately 260 million "untouchables" or "Dalits" ("broken people") throughout the world today, many of whom continue to deal with discrimination. The issue of caste has been discussed for over one hundred years, and Pillay says action is well overdue.

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the entire movement is that many laws do exist to criminalise caste-based discrimination in theory, protecting Dalits from violence and exploitation. Affirmative action programs exist to guarantee Dalits a presence in the government and access to education. However, strong discrimination continues to be practiced. This paradox is perhaps illustrated best in India, where the vast majority of Dalits live.

Dalits have faced death from upper caste individuals for entering a Brahmin temple, or lynching for inter-caste marriage. In some parts of Northern India Dalits must vote in segregated polling stations. "India's ban on caste-based discrimination will not be effective unless the government makes it a priority to enforce it," said Paul Divakar, general secretary of the NCDHR in India. "Violence and other human rights abuses against Dalits are still committed with impunity. The government should work with the international community to address this problem".

The concept of caste continues to centre a heated debate in international circles. For Pillay, caste issues have been distorted by governments such as India who have successfully argued in UN conferences that existing policies, conventions, and treaties against human rights abuses do not apply.

In general, lower-caste individuals are confined to menial, low-income employment while deprived of land and credit. Many are doomed to indebtedness and labour bondage, which is a form of slavery that continues generation after generation. Dalit rights tend to fall under the purview of the UN's Guidelines for the Effective Elimination of Discrimination based on Work and Descent in various intergovernmental discussions on caste.

Pillay advocates that the Human Rights Council adopt the 2009 Draft Principles for the Guidelines. The Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination does list descent as a form of racial discrimination. The Durban Declaration and Programme of Action, adopted at the World Conference on Racism in 2001, also recognized descent-based discrimination. However, Durban made no explicit recognition of caste.

Due to the obfuscation of governments and the interpretive flux of intergovernmental bodies, Pillay suggests creating a new international convention explicitly recognising caste-based discrimination as a human rights violation. Through such recognition, Pillay hopes to incite the type of international pressure used against apartheid.

In a positive step, the government of Nepal, a predominantly Hindu nation and home to 4.5 million Dalits, has expressed support for the UN to adopt principles and guidelines on caste discrimination. Approximately 200 million victims of caste discrimination live in India. Bangladesh, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka also have sizeable Dalit populations.

Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development - Dalit rights: Casting "untouchables" into discourse of Apartheid

 

[RiazHaq]

The infamous wall in Uthapuram village in Tamil Nadu, meant to keep Dalits away from higher caste areas, may have been demolished, but it will take much longer to demolish the walls in people's minds.

Uthapuram, in Perayur taluka in Madurai district, hit the headlines 19 years ago after caste riots claimed nine lives.

This village has an equal number of Dalits and Pillays, the latter belong to the Other Backward Classes.

However, the Pillays are 'backward' only in government records. Not only do they consider themselves superior to the Dalits, they are also financially better off.

The Dalits are not merely farm labourers, they also own farmland. This is rare in rural Tamil Nadu, where the landowners usually belong to the backward classes.

The wall owes its origin to the caste riots in 1989 that erupted when minor skirmishes between the Pillays and Dalits turned ugly. The Pillay community alleged that Dalit men sat under a peepul tree and teased girls from their community, who came to fetch water from a nearby public pipe.

In the Tamil month of Panguni (March-April), the Dalit community celebrates its annual temple festival in Uthapuram. As part of the festival, the priest participates in a procession across the village.

The Dalits believe that their diety lives in the peepul tree. In 1989, when the priest reached the tree along with a large number of Dalit devotees, members of the Pillay community told them that it was their land and the Dalits did not have the right to come there.

This triggered off the violence, in which two Pillays and three Dalits were killed. Later, four members of the Dalit community were killed in police firing.

Village elders and community leaders from 30 surrounding villages participated in a peace meeting that was called to resolve the crisis.

They decided that the peepul tree belonged to the Pillays as it stood next to their Mallyamman temple. Further, it was decided that a wall would be built to prevent Dalit youth from entering the Pillays' residential area.

The wall also makes up part of the homes of some Pillays. The Dalits now claim that the agreement to grant the peepul tree to the Pillays and build the wall was forced upon them as the Pillay community was more powerful.

V Pushpam, Uthapuram's panchayat president, told rediff.com, "The wall was an idea by the village elders from both communities. The panchayat has got nothing to do with it."

The village has not witnessed any violence in the last 19 years. While the wall separated the two communities, Dalits continued to work in Pillay fields. They bought foodgrain and vegetables from each other. The two communties even borrowed money from each other.

Both communities have members belonging to various political parties, who worked together during elections. But they never drink water at each other's homes. While the Dalits claim that the Pillays never offer them water, the Pillays retort that the Dalits don't drink water even when it is offered to them.

During this year's temple festival took place when Dalit devotees arrived at the controversial peepul tree, members of the Pillay community were repairing the Mallyamman temple which was covered with coconut leaves.

A member of the Pillay community, who is also a member of the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam in Tamil Nadu, is said to have told a fellow DMK worker, a Dalit, 'Please be careful with your crackers. They might set fire to the coconut leaves covering this temple and that would be disastrous.'

The Dalits say they were told, 'Don't make noise here. Come and go silently.'

The Dalits then complained to the nearest police station located in the neighbouring village of Elumalai. The policemen ensured that the rest of the temple festival passed off peacefully, without any untoward incidents.

But the issue of the wall festered, and the matter was taken up by the local legislator, who belongs to the Opposition All India Anna Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam.

The state government promptly swung into action and broke a portion of the wall to carve out a path. While the Dalits hailed the move, members of the Pillay community returned their ration cards as a mark of protest and left for the hills nearby.

The Pillays have now presented a charter of demands to the district administration. These include:

* The demolished wall should be rebuilt as it is on private land.
* The area around the Mallyamman temple should be given to the Pillays.
* Construction of a police station in the village.
* The government should rebuild the 32 houses that were destroyed in the 1989 caste riots.
* The 'false' cases against members of the Pillay community, which were registered after the demolition of the wall, should be withdrawn.

If the area around the Mallyamman temple is given to the Pillays, the Dalits will not be able to bring their procession to the area.

Rebuilding the controversial wall is also not an option for the government, which will have to pay compensation and acquire the private land.

Alleges S P Murugesan, an accountant from the village, "The entire controversy was planned and executed by the Communist Party of India-Marxist to garner votes among Dalits. This is a village of 1,500 people. They brainwashed 25 Dalit youth and told them to reject the 1989 agreement. Then they planted the news in a national daily. They published a false photograph."

The district collector agrees that the wall was only 21.84 metres long, not 600 metres, as suggested in a newspaper report.

The village administrative officer of Nagasundaram village has been on duty in Uthapuram for a year now. He says the village was always peaceful, but adds, "The district collector is personally handling this matter. Please leave me out of this. I don't know anything."

The rift between the two communities is evident from the fact that they have two separate schools for their children. While Dalit children go to a primary school till Class 5, the Pillay community sends its children to a middle school till Class 8.

The Dalit community has seven graduates including a retired head constable, a bank manager, a Life Insurance Corporation clerk, a teacher and three men in the army.

The Pillays are better educated and have better jobs. Over the years, they have sold some of their fields to the Dalits, as they could not look after the land themselves.

This village, which has been in the news for the wrong reasons, is very much like any other village in Tamil Nadu. Boys from a particular community teasing girls from another community is the most common cause of conflict in rural Tamil Nadu.

The wall, which divided the village, has been razed. But bridging the social divide between the two communities will take much more effort from both sides.

Why breaking an 'anti-Dalit' wall is not enough

 

[durgs360]

^^^^^ Now thats better ! Only 2 years old article ! Good work !

 

[RiazHaq]

An extensive survey of 21 Dalit habitations by activists of the Tamil Nadu Untouchability Eradication Front (TNUEF) has brought to light the discrimination that Dalits living in the city have faced for generations. The findings explode the myth that discrimination is experienced by Dalits only in isolated villages and that the evil practice is on the wane. But the political parties except those of the Left by and large maintain a stoic silence on the issue.

Releasing the report of the study on December 18, 2009, P. Sampath, State convener of the TNUEF, said Dalits in Madurai city were haunted by problems such as poor health and unhygienic living conditions. They also lacked proper housing, a proper environment for education, employment opportunities, financial assistance for self-employment and social mobility, and faced delays in the disbursement of welfare assistance, including old-age pension, he said. Non-issuance of pattas for those who have been residing in the city for more than three decades is another issue highlighted by the organisation. The plight of sanitary workers, those working in cremation grounds, and cobblers who belong to the Arunthathiar community has also been brought to light.

palashscape: Fwd: [PMARC] Dalits Media Watch- Exclusive: Front Line / Hidden apartheid

 

[RiazHaq]

Here is a comment someone left on my blog that talks about the human angle of the ongoing Maoists insurgency in India:

the sad part is the casteism, that is rampant in this region. i heard a story, about a woman maoist sniper, who had played havoc with the security forces. they could not find her for three months, and toll was mounting....one day by sheer luck, they caught her and killed her. she had fallen and the security forces just watched her die, gasping for breath, for they were afraid, that she might detonate a hand grenade. the officer of the troops however took a chance to approach her and give her water. she just spat that water on his face. he says there was a look on her face that he will take with him until his death. she was high up in the maoist hierarchy so the officer went ahead to check her background. he found that she was from a village in srikakulam, in andhra pradesh. she was married at 16. On her first night, it was not her husband who came to her, but the landlord of the place. a 60 year old man abusing a 16 year
old. it is a custom it seemed in that region, that the first night should be with landlord. she lost her mind after that night, recovered , left her husband and wandered ,eventually joining the maoists.

there are many indians here who blame pakistanis. we say Pakistan is going wrong because of its establishment. namely the mullah, military and rich anglican pakistani elite. dont we have that oligarchy here in india! do we not have the upper caste hindus, the landlord, the rich businessmen and the politicians forming an oligarchy? An oligarchy that is simply growing rich by exploiting the vast riches of our soil?
whatever we might say about Pakistan, please understand that atleast some of them, have opened their eyes to this oligarchy. have we in india done that? the answer is no.

there is a company called vedanta resources. it is headquatered in london, and they are billionaires. they want minig rights to a mountain hill in jharkhand, that a real rare find. it has amongst the best Bauxite content. but the gond tribes who are in that area say, our god lives on this hill! we have a temple there, so we will not allow you to mine!
you know what the company management said? We will rebuild a better temple for you in the plains? (take it from our corporate social responsibility account) WOW! great minds these MBA`s are from our management institutes?
we have a temple atop palani hill in tamilnadu. we have been praying over it for few thousand years, if vedanta or anyone tells us, hey there is gold in that mountain you guys better shift, then do you think we will allow that? we will skin those MBA`s right there and hang it to dry.
but then the poor gond tribals and their tribal god? thats fate isnt it?
the officer who told me this story, weeps at the guilt of having killed a poor girl. i left him saying if you carry fighting with guilt, you will get killed.
how many more lives will we corrode?

Haq's Musings: Dalit Victims of Apartheid in India

 

[Cityboy]

Jab jab *** ko nind nai ati he,to riaz ki ek do thread dhudh ke padh leta hu. Ekdam mast nind aa jati he fir boring aur pakau crap post padh ke.chalo me to chala sone. Shubh ratri

 

[Kinetic]

Hey Raiz I have seen your blog. You seemed to be more concerned about India and her problems than your own country. Most of your posts are India related!!! Good though, keep it up.

India should get rid of caste problem, among Hindus upper caste and lower caste, among Muslims Shia and Sunni... We need to work on that more and more.

 

[RiazHaq]

At 23, Nirupama Pathak seemed to have seamlessly made the transition from her small home-town in Jharkhand to big city life. Read: Delhi journalist murdered: Honour killing?)

Supported by her parents, she arrived in Delhi to study journalism at one of the capital's premier institutes. There, she fell in love with a classmate, Priyabhanshu Ranjan. A job at one of India's best-known newspapers, the Business Standard, followed. On Facebook, she commented on political and personal issues. She was easy-going, unpretentious and helpful.

The roots that seemed to ground her rose quickly to strangle her. Nirupama was a Brahmin, her boyfriend a Kayastha. Where she came from, that was enough to stop everything.

Last week, Nirupama's family summoned her home, insisting that her mother, Sudha, was not keeping well. On Thursday night, Nirupama was found dead in her bedroom at her Jharkhand home. Her family said she had committed suicide by hanging herself. The post-mortem clearly spelled murder by asphyxiation. "There are no external injury marks on her, which means that she was probably pinned down by a few people and then smothered," said P Mohan, a surgeon in Nirupama's hometown of Koderma.

Her mother, Sudha, was arrested for her murder and sent to 14-day jail on Monday. Nirupama's father, Dharmendra, says though the family wasn't pleased with her relationship with Priyanshu, because he was from a different caste, he would never hurt his daughter. "You have to first look at your own caste, then you should look elsewhere... but we only advised her," he told NDTV, reiterating that his daughter's death was a suicide.

The crime shows yet again how 'honour killings' cannot be considered the curse of rural India where panchayats often order the execution of young couples who dare to cross caste borders. Nirupama's father worked at a bank, her brothers were PhDs, the family had helped Nirupama to move far from home to follow her dreams.

"I have not only lost my girlfriend and would-be wife... her parents have also killed me. When I last spoke with her, she asked me to forget her, she said 'they are not letting her come back', so I asked her who was stopping her, considering only her mother was at home. She told me that her brother's friend was also present, I should have asked her for his name, this was a mistake I made," says Priyabhanshu. (Watch: Nirupama's boyfriend speaks to NDTV)

Meanwhile, the National Commission for Women (NCW) has asked for the case to be handled by a fast-track court.

Journalist's mother arrested for alleged honour killing