Pyaar aur dhoka: why India murders and kidnaps for love

Love in India is far from what Bollywood feeds you. Happily ever afters, if the National Crime Records Bureau is to be believed, is not what a lot of Indians in love, live to see. They are either murdered or wallow in jails for avenging wronged, unrequited love. Be it an unemployed youth in Delhi, who shot four members of a family after an affair with his sister-in-law went sour or the high profile Neeraj Grover murder case, affairs gone sour seem to driving young Indians to murder. [caption id=“attachment_479548” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Neeraj Grover, who was murdered by his girlfriend Maria Susairaj’s ex-lover Jerome Matthew.[/caption] A report by Tripti Lahiri on India Realtime, the India blog of Wall Street Journal, says that crimes of passion have risen steeply in the country. A spate of recent incidents where whole families have been killed by jilted lovers perhaps only corroborate the NCRB’s findings, that murders sparked by romantic affairs gone wrong have risen by a steep 11 percent in the past year. The India Realtime report says, “About 2,637 of these murders was due to ’love’, making it the third most common motive for murder after ‘personal vendetta’ and ‘property dispute’, respectively.” Not just that, in true Bollywood style, 62 percent of women and young girls who are kidnapped in India, are victims of men, ‘who want to marry them’. The article says:

In 2011, there were 45,239 kidnappings and abductions reported to the authorities across India, a nearly 16% increase from the previous year. Of these, 34,870 cases involved women or girls, about 70% of them between the ages of 15 and 30. The motive behind the kidnappings in 21,691 of the total cases was marriage.

Interestingly, the reports maintained by the crime records bureau slot women kidnapped for flesh trade and attempted rape under a different category. Read the WSJ report here.