In the first honour killing in Kolkata in decades, a 29-year-old youth dragged his sister out on the street and cut off her head with one stroke of the sword in Ayubnagar locality of Nadial, barely 13km from the city centre, on Friday.
Scores of residents looked on in horror as Mehtab Alam walked to a police station with the head in his left hand and the sword in his right, dripping blood all along the way.
We know the rest without looking. She had sex with someone, or her brother thought she had sex with someone, or the brother thought the neighbors might think she had sex with someone, or the brother thought the neighbors might think the brother might think the neighbors might think she had sex with someone. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. Somebody somewhere might suspect that Mehtab Alam’s sister had The Wrong Penis up her, so her head had to be cut off – in the street where everyone could see.
Even as deputy commissioner-port division Mehboob Rehman rushed to the scene of crime, where Nilofar’s headless body lay in a pool of blood, Mehtab told the numbed police officers that he had killed his sister for “running off with a lover and dishonouring the family”, say sources. Nilofar was married for eight years and had two children. It was “immoral” for her to live with her former paramour, Firoz Hossain, Mehtab apparently told police.
And if it’s immoral, then her brother has every right to cut her head off. The wages of sluttery is decapitation.
Nilofar married Akbar of Pachura, Rabindranagar, when she was 14. They have a son aged six and a daughter, four. On November 28, she ran away from her in-laws’ home, alleging that she was being harassed and tortured by Akbar’s brother. On November 30, she disappeared from herpaternal home, too.
Nilofar’s father lodged a missing person’s diary at Nadial police station. In a few days, Mehtab came to know that she was with Firoz, with whom she had an affair before marriage, say police.
That “married” is interesting – as if she’d done it of her own volition. How likely is that at age 14? And if it is likely, is it legal? No; the legal age in India is 18 for girls.
Whatever. She won’t be marrying or shacking up with anyone now.