New Delhi: Crimes against women continue to shame civil society in India.
Close on the heels of an alleged gangrape of a law student inside a Kolkata college campus comes the news of another shocker, this one from Haryana.
In a heinous act, a 24-year-old woman was raped by her father-in-law before being killed and buried in a pit which was dug outside her marital home in Faridabad.
The crime took place in April, but remained undetected for two months as the woman’s in-laws claimed she had gone missing.
A native of UP’s Firozabad district, the victim got married in July 2023. Around a year later, she was subjected to harassment over dowry demands, according to her family.
Her partially decomposed body was recovered on Saturday (June 21) from beneath a concrete slab laid over a 10-foot-deep pit outside her in-laws’ residence.
The father-in-law confessed to the crime during interrogation, and is currently under police remand with the district crime unit.
The evil plan
According to police, after the plan to kill the woman was finalised on April 14, her mother-in-law was sent to attend a wedding in Etah. On the night of April 21, the woman’s husband allegedly mixed sleeping pills into the food served to her and his sister following which the duo, sleeping in different rooms on different floors, fell unconscious.
As per the father-in-law’s confession, he entered the room and raped his unconscious daughter-in-law before killing her.
However, he did not disclose the rape to his wife or son at the time, police said.
The culprit called his son upstairs, and they allegedly wrapped the woman’s body and threw it into a pit that had been excavated on the lane just outside the house.
The pit, which neighbours had believed was for sewerage work, was filled with bricks and soil after the body was dumped inside. Thereafter, a concrete slab was laid over it.
After burying the body, the father-in-law filed a missing person’s complaint on April 25.
An FIR has been registered against the father-in-law, mother-in-law, husband and sister-in-law.
The victim’s sister complained that the woman used to suffer abuse since the time of her marriage. In fact, she had gone to her parents’ home within months of her wedding and stayed there for over a year due to the ill-treatment.
