Kabrai, Mahoba. On the night of 27 May, barely 15 kilometres from the district headquarters in Mahoba, a man beat his young daughter and her husband to death. Uttam Singh, a resident of Chhatarpur district in Madhya Pradesh was nabbed by the Mahoba police on 31 May and has confessed to the crime.
The crime took place in Srinagar kasba of Mahoba. The deceased Kajal and her husband Chandrabhan, married in April, were living in Mahoba with Chandrabhan’s family. They were asleep that night when a drunk Uttam Singh attacked them with a stick. ‘By the time we heard their screams and woke up, both Kajal and Chandrabhan were seriously injured and unconscious. We rushed them to the Srinagar Hospital but they were already dead,’ said Lal Diwan, Chandrabhan’s brother.
‘A few months ago, Kajal and Chandrabhan had fallen in love and had run away from home because Kajal’s father was opposed to the marriage,’ Chandrabhan’s other brother Prem Kumar informed reporters. ‘Kajal’s sisters are also married into our family. Both families have shared cordial relations. There was a village panchayat held in March after Chandrabhan and Kajal had run away. Everyone decided that the couple should be married. Even Kajal’s father Uttam Singh agreed to the match at that time,’ he added.
According to Chandrabhan’s family, the couple were married at a community marriage ceremony (where a number of couples are married in the presence of a District official) in Mahoba on 30 April. Kajal came to live with her husband and his family in Srinagar. However, barely a month later, her father, ostensibly in Mahoba to meet his daughter, beat her and her husband to death for no apparent reason.
A murder case under Section 302 of the Indian Penal Code was registered against Uttam Singh, who was absconding till he was caught on 31 May from a nearby village. Station Officer Nayan Singh at the Srinagar Police Station said that Uttam Singh readily confessed to his crime. ‘In his statement to the police Uttam Singh said that even though the couple had been married for a month, neighbours and others in the village had been gossiping about how his daughter had run away. Uttam Singh said that he was drunk that night and had come to see his daughter because he was angered by the constant gossip in his native village. He further admitted that he had attacked the couple in a fit of rage and beat them to death,’ Nayan Singh said.
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