Bhawna Yadav, a 21-year old student of Sri Venkateswara College, Delhi University, was strangled to death by her parents, when they learned that she had married Punjabi boy, Abhishek Seth, who didn’t belong to her caste. In a statement given to the police, Bhawna’s parents have confessed to killing her. After a heated argument with her parents broke down, Bhawna’s mother took the lead on beating her up and, finally, strangling her while, her father held down her feet.
The couple on their wedding day. ( Source )
It reads like a movie plot. Love at first sight, families opposed to the star-crossed lovers who decide to get married in the hope that they will find acceptance and, in the end, everything becomes okay.
Except that it didn’t. For, neither did this DU student nor her husband foresee the tragic ending to their love story.
The couple tied the knot on his birthday (November 12, 2014), only to be torn apart by her parents, three days later.
It was a matter of pride and honour, they said. And so, they did what was apparently the only logical thing to be done… and strangled her to death.
Just like that, the young couple’s life together ended before it could even begin. Many questions come to mind.
1. As a society, are we moving forward at all? For all our talk of progress and tolerance, has anything, really, changed?
2. Are we educating our girls only so that they earn, not learn? Does this education not involve the freedom to live on their own terms?
3. Isn’t there a need to educate the families? Are we missing the whole point of education?
This happened in Delhi, not an oft-looked down upon remote village, tucked away in a corner of India. The culprits are the educated, middle-class, like you and me.