Inter-caste couple in Tamil Nadu's Thoothukudi murdered in suspected honour-killing case, father of woman arrested

A woman and her husband were murdered by a group of people in Tamil Nadu’s Thoothukudi on Wednesday allegedly due to the fact that theirs was an inter-caste marriage. The father of the woman, 24-year-old A Jothi, was arrested on Thursday. Reportedly, he was vehemently opposed to the marriage. Jothi and Solairaj, belonged to different castes in the Scheduled Castes (SC) category. The two were sleeping in the courtyard outside their house in the Thanthai Periyar Nagar area when the armed gang attacked them and hacked them to death.

Tamil Nadu: Solairajan and his pregnant wife Jothi were hacked to death by a group of people yesterday in Thoothukudi allegedly over their intercaste marriage. The father of the girl has been arrested. pic.twitter.com/V8LgOKhCcg

— ANI (@ANI) July 5, 2019

“When Solairaja’s mother came to the house in the morning, she saw her son and daughter-in-law, who was carrying a 60-day-old fetus, lying in a pool of blood with multiple cut injuries on their necks and faces,” The Hindu reported. Superintendent of Police Arun Balagopalan ordered for the bodies to be sent to the Thoothukudi Government Medical College Hospital for the post-mortem.  “We suspect it is a caste-based crime,” Balagopalan was quoted by The News Minute as saying. With inputs from agencies