A teenage girl in India was allegedly beaten to death and publicly hanged by her male family members for wearing jeans.
The mother of 17-year-old Neha Paswan said that her daughter’s grandfather and uncles attacked her with sticks in her own home after an argument about her clothes, according to the BBC.
The fatal beating occurred last week in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, one of the nation’s least developed regions, according to the outlet.
“She had kept a day-long religious fast. In the evening, she put on a pair of jeans and a top and performed her rituals. When her grandparents objected to her attire, Neha retorted that jeans were made to be worn and that she would wear it,” Shakuntala Devi Paswan told BBC Hindi.
When the argument turned violent and a gang beating left the girl unconscious, male relatives said they were calling a driver to take her to the hospital, according to the report.
“They wouldn’t let me accompany them so I alerted my relatives who went to the district hospital looking for her but couldn’t find her,” Shakuntala Devi said.
The next morning, the girl’s mother found Neha’s body hanging from a bridge over a river, according to the article.
Ten people are reportedly being investigated for murder and destruction of evidence, including the teen’s grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins and the driver of the auto rickshaw that was supposedly taking her to be treated. Four of them have been arrested, the outlet said.
Shakuntala Devi reportedly said her in-laws were pressuring Neha, an aspiring police officer, to abandon her studies in a local school, even as her father worked as a day laborer in Punjab to pay for the girl’s education.
The horrifying case highlights the violence that women and girls face at home in the patriarchal society, where misogynistic attacks are often sanctioned by family elders, the BBC said.
On average, 20 women are killed every day in India for bringing in insufficient dowries, according to the outlet.
Last month, footage emerged of a 20-year-old woman being beaten by her father and three male cousins for running away from an abusive husband in the nearby state of Madhya Pradesh, according to the Indian Express.
A week before, two girls in the region were slapped, kicked, dragged by the hair and beaten with sticks by family members for talking to a male cousin on the phone, according to NDTV.
Police reportedly arrested seven people after the footage went viral. But video showed that onlookers failed to intervene during the attack.
In another viral June attack in the state of Gujarat, two teenage girls were beaten by a mob of at least 15 men for talking on their cellphones, according to India Today.
“It’s shocking that in the 21st century, we are killing and assaulting girls for wearing jeans or talking on a mobile phone,” gender activist Rolly Shivhare told the BBC.
“The government says girls are our priority and announces grand schemes for their welfare, but nothing happens on the ground,” Shivhare reportedly said.
“The shelter homes and crisis centers in India are few and most are so badly run that no one would want to go live there. Our government needs to allocate more funds and improve their condition.
“But the only long-term solution is to make girls more aware of their rights.”
A 2018 poll by the Thomson Reuters Foundation found that experts ranked India as the most dangerous UN member country for women and girls.
Consider that much of Asia is outside of civilized society …. at best- lost somewhere in the 9th century ….
The notion of exporting decent civilzation to these countries is like attempting to grow bananas at the NorthPole ! ….. If anyone MUST travel to these savage nations , remember to set your wrist watch back
1,000 years ..I have seen enough of these areas to satisfy my curiosity …
I do not understand the CONSTANT brutality and violence almost everywhere.
In the state that I live in, hardly a day(night) goes by without at least one shooting.
The damn fool Democrats want to take away every ones firearms ( BUT NOT THEIR OWN ).
I believe that Trump, his relatives and supporters have caused a lot of the problems
by their causing the Country to be divided, their constant demand that the Election
was rigged, the restrictions due to the Pandemic, the “experts” inability to make up
their minds about masks, their refusal to acknowledge the dangers in vaccines, etc.
If the election was on the up & up, we wouldn’t be in all this chaos…. Not the fault of the Trumps. He won the election. Even the countries around the world know it to be true… whether you believe it or not. If we don’t fight for our freedoms, and stop the hostile take over by the communist, our country is lost.
I agree 100%
And think the election was fair and Biden is doing a great job?
Even the animal kingdom and wild beasts don’t act that bad.
I believe we should control our immigration laws and by law no-one who practices a religion that accepts “honor” killings as anything other than First Degree Murder are not allowed to immigrate to this country. This idea of killing females is always justified by “they dishonored the family, husband, whatever”!! That thinking is not compatible with anything in the USA and can never ever be accepted.