A case of honour killing has surfaced following the arrest of a man and three of his relatives for the alleged murder of his 19-year-old daughter, just 17 km from Ahmedabad.
The young girl, named Mansi, is believed to have been killed for expressing a desire to marry a man from the same clan.
The incident came to attention when the Ahmedabad rural police were informed about an unidentified body being burned in the Kanbha area of Bakrol village, located in the Daskroi taluka of Ahmedabad district.
Superintendent of Police (Ahmedabad Rural) Omprakash Jat said, “Tipped off about the incident, Kabha police filed a complaint, and inspector N N Pargi was tasked with investigating the case. This led to the arrest of the father and his relatives who had lured Mansi to Halol on the pretext of attending a religious discourse and murdered her.”
Following an investigation into the incident, the father, Arvind Solanki, along with his two brothers, Popatsinh and Natvarsinh, and nephew, were taken into custody. Arvind’s other nephew, who is fleeing, is currently being tracked by police.
Providing further details, inspector Pargi said, “Mansi had expressed her desire to marry a youth from the same clan and had eloped with him twice but returned home. As they shared the same gotra (clan) and deity, their marriage was prohibited under local customs. The boy and girl both hailed from influential families in the same village, further complicating matters.”
The FIR, filed on Friday night, said that on September 6, while on patrol, head constable Govind Ramabhai learnt that an individual was being burnt at the crematorium in Bujrang village.
Pruthvisinh Solanki, the village sarpanch, verified the cremation of an unidentified body the next day. SP Jat received information about the incident and directed the Kanbha police to file a complaint.
The victim had been cremated using wood, leaving the remains only partially burned when police arrived at the crematorium. Since Mansi’s family moved to Ahmedabad’s Naroda area in August, there had been growing suspicions in the village that the body could be Mansi’s.
Using both technological analysis and human sources, the investigation discovered that Mansi’s family had moved out of the village while she continued pushing for the marriage despite their concerns.
The family’s fears of more embarrassment and reputational damage within the community are detailed in the FIR. Mansi’s father and other family members plotted her murder because she refused to back down from her insistence on marrying the boy, even after several efforts to talk her out of it.
The police say that they killed her by strangling her and then cremated her body in their village during the night.
The Kanbha police have filed a complaint against the five accused under Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita Sections 103(1) (murder), 61(2)(a) (criminal conspiracy), and 238(a) (causing the disappearance of evidence of an offence or giving false information to screen an offender).
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