Honour killing in Bengal: Man kills daughter for eloping with boy of different faith

In what is suspected to be an honour killing, father of a Muslim girl has allegedly strangulated his daughter and then mutilated her head with a stone before dumping her body on the highway near Burdwan district in West Bengal to prevent her from getting married to a Hindu boy.  

Body of a young girl was recovered from a bush off Nabagram Durgapur Expressway on August 31. She was wearing a pink salwar kurta and her face had been mutilated with a heavy stone. Her body was sent for a post mortem where it was discovered that there were two phone numbers written on her body with mehendi.

Officials of Jamalpur Police Station in Burdwan East district tracked the phone numbers and got hold of a person, Karan Singh who was in Mumbai. A team of district police went to Mumbai and met Singh. When they showed him a picture of the girl, he recognised her and identified her as Jahana Khatoon, a resident of Muzaffarpur in Bihar. They were neighbours.

Upon questioning, Singh told cops that he was in a relationship with Jahana but her family did not approve of it. They had eloped but Jahana’s father Md Mushtaque had managed to bring his daughter back and tried to persuade her from breaking the relationship with Singh.

It was from Singh that police came to know that Mushtaque and his son Md Jahid lived in Park Circus area in Kolkata and worked as drivers. Another team went to Jahana’s native place in Muzaffarpur and found out that a few days ago she had been taken to Kolkata by her father and brother.

On September 9, police carried out a search for the father-son duo at Park Circus and late into the night, held them for questioning. During interrogation, Mushtaque broke down and admitted that he had killed Jahana.

“We had thought we will get her married off to someone else but father said she will elope with Singh later. Villagers also said that till we get her married off, we should not bring her to the village and if we did, they would not let her enter the village. We brought her to Kolkata,” Jahid said. He also said that he had made up his mind to get her married with Singh and while they were on their way back in a car, near Asansol, Mushtaque said that she should be killed. “I was driving the car when he took a rope which was inside the car and strangulated her. Later he asked me to stop the car and he dumped the body off the road and mutilated her head with a stone,” he added.

Sometime ago Jahana was taken to her aunt’s place for a wedding. Either she or someone else had written the phone numbers on her legs with mehendi. “It could have either been out of fun or Jahana had the premonition that she would be taken somewhere and killed so she wrote that,” a senior police officer of the district said.

Sources in the police department said that they were amazed at how matter-of-factly Jahid had described the murder of her sister. “It shows how much their customs are prioritised over a relationship,” an official said. They were produced at the district court on Tuesday.