Pregnant girl beaten to death

Honour killings have been often reported in western Uttar Pradesh, but now the trend appears to be catching on in eastern UP as well. An 18-year-old girl, Rajni Sahu, was beaten to death in Allahabad on Wednesday by family members after they discovered she was pregnant with her lover Vipin Kesarwani’s child.

The girl’s father Shivram Sahu told the police on Wednesday morning that his daughter Rajni had committed suicide. When the police reached the victim’s residence at Neta Nagar in Kydganj locality, they found Rajni’s body hanging from a hook in the roof.

They were shown a suicide note, purportedly written by Rajni, in which she wrote that she was in love with Vipin Kesarwani, who lived in the neighbourhood. She wrote that she was ending her life because their respective families had refused to accept the alliance.

The post-mortem report, which came later in the day, however, told another story. Rajni had been hit with a blunt object in the stomach, which caused injuries to her unborn child. There were finger marks on her neck, which indicated she had been strangulated and her head had also been banged against the wall.