The Hyderabad Police on Thursday arrested two persons for allegedly killing a Dalit man for marrying a Muslim woman from their family, The News Minute reported.
Billipuram Nagaraju, 26, was stabbed with a knife and hit with an iron rod on a busy road in Hyderabad’s Saroornagar area on the evening of May 4.
The two arrested men, Syed Mobin Ahmed and Mohammed Masood Ahmed, attacked Nagaraju when he was travelling with his wife Ashrin Sultana. Mobin is a brother of Sultana.
Several bystanders recorded the assault on their mobile phones, but they did not try to stop the attackers.
“They killed my husband in the middle of the street,” Sultana told reporters, according to NDTV. “Why did people come if they couldn’t do anything? They only watched. It happens before their eyes, someone being killed, can’t people see? I fell on him so I could save him. But they pushed me away. They hit him with iron rods and broke his head.”
Nagaraju and Sultana got married as per Hindu rituals on January 30, but Sultana’s family was opposed to the marriage. The couple was in a relationship for more than five years, according to The News Minute.
“Ashrin’s brother Syed Mobin Ahmed and her brother-in-law Syed Shakeel Ahmed were opposed to Ashrin’s marriage to a person belonging to another religion,” Deputy Commissioner of Police Sunpreet Singh said, according to Deccan Chronicle.
According to police, the two accused persons had initially planned to kill Nagaraju at his workplace. They later decided to attack the couple in the Saroornagar area when they were returning from a relative’s place. They have been charged under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code.
“The motive is clear,” Saroornagar Inspector K Seetharam told The News Minute. “They killed the victim because he belonged to a different religion.”
Meanwhile, members of the Bharatiya Janata Party held protests in Hyderabad against the killing. Party spokesperson Krishna Saagar Rao said that hate crimes were unacceptable.
“The only crime committed by Nagaraju for which he was gruesomely hacked to death was marrying a Muslim girl,” Rao said. “Incidents like this throw a bad light on the social deterioration and extreme intolerance of religious identity.”
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