Aayushi Chaudhary Honour Killing Case Highlights The Horrors of Casteist Patriarchy

It happened “in a fit of rage,” Nitesh Kumar Yadav reportedly confessed to the police. A few days ago, the police found the body of a 22-year-old BCA student, Aayushi Chaudhary, in a red trolley bag near Raya on the Yamuna Expressway.

Allegedly, Aayushi had a ‘secret’ wedding with Chhatrapal Singh Gurjar, a 24-year old young man she knew since her school days. She was trying to convince her parents to accept her husband, and therefore, told them that she was pregnant. However, the post-mortem report confirmed that she was not.

On Monday, November 21, Yadav (49) and his wife, Brajbala (45), performed Aayushi’s last rites in Mathura. The parents were reportedly aggrieved by their daughter’s ‘independent style’ of living. Their relationship worsened when she confessed to marrying Gurjar.

According to the police, Aayushi’s parents had ordered him to stay away from Gurjar. She got upset when she learnt about it, and in an argument with her parents, the woman said she was experiencing stomach aches probably because she was pregnant. Reportedly, Yadav shot her and his wife helped him in disposing of the body of their daughter.

MP Singh, SP (City), Agra, said, “Though her marriage was solemnised in an Arya Samaj Mandir a year ago and registered in a Shahdara court in October this year, Aayushi wanted her parents to accept it and ‘willingly’ marry her off to Gurjar publicly again.”

Other Cases Of Honour Killing In India In 2022

May 6, 2022: Sayed Ashrin Sultana aka Pallavi married Nagaraju, a 25-year old Dalit man. Her Muslim family killed her husband in Hyderabad. According to reports, she narrated the entire story to the police.

June 14, 2022: In Tamil Nadu, Sakthivel (31) killed his sister, Saranya (24) and her husband, Mohan (31), at Kumbakonam, Thanjavur district, Tamil Nadu. Mohan was from the Naicker caste, while Saranya was a Dalit.

Sakthivel reportedly wanted his sister to marry his friend Ranjith (28). However, when the couple got married without his permission, he invited them both for dinner and hacked them to death.

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November 9, 2022: Reportedly, a man drowned his daughter in Ballari district, Karnataka. He had already warned her against continuing her relationship (tackle common problems in a relationship) with a man. When she did not listen to her, he pushed her into a water body.

November 18, 2022: Police found the mutilated bodies of Sonu Singh (28) and Rahul Meena (30) in Udaipur, Rajasthan. Sonu belonged to the Rajput community, while Rahul was from a tribal community.

These are just four of the recent cases of honour killings in India, and there were many others that were possibly never even reported. Our country has a history of parents murdering their own children for ‘besmirching their family honour’ by marrying a person of a different caste or class. There have also been cases where families took it upon their honour if their kid turned out to be trans or identified as queer.

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Honour Killing Statistics In India

According to the National Crime Bureau 2020 statistics, there were a total of 25 cases (States + Union Territories) of honour killings in India. Between 2017 and 2018, it was reported that only one such killing happened, where the motive of the murder was an honour.

However, in 2019, an NGO report stated that 195 cases of honour killings were reported alone from Tamil Nadu. It means several cases go unreported. This article alone mentions three such cases in November 2022.

We may never find out if there are more. But as long as society values its casteist patriarchal (internalised patriarchy) rigidity over the lives of their actual children, this horrific practice seems likely to continue.