Boyfriend Stabs, Beats Teenage Girlfriend To Death
The gruesome murder of a 16-year-old girl in the Indian capital city, Delhi, who was stabbed and beaten to death has sparked outrage over the safety of women in the Asian country.
The Guardian UK said CCTV footage of the incident showed the teenager was accosted in public by a man.
It said the man was alleged by police to be 20-year-old Sahil Khan, who stabbed her more than 30 times and hit her with a concrete slab, in an alley as pedestrians watched the said incident.
According to the report, several bystanders encountered the incident and though one man attempted to intervene and was violently repudiated by the attacker, nothing else was done to stop him.
It was reported that no one called the police and after the killing, her body lay in the alleyway untouched until it was spotted by a police informant about 30 minutes later.
According to police, Khan had been in a relationship with the girl and had planned to kill her after she tried to end it.
He had allegedly used a knife bought two weeks previously, and had followed her from the market to the dark alley, where he attacked her.
“Sahil told us she humiliated him and passed objectionable comments about their relationship. This angered him and he decided to eliminate her,” a police officer told local media.
The attack instigated outrage from activists and politicians who demanded that more be done to protect women in the capital.
Delhi’s chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, said on Twitter: “A minor girl is brutally murdered openly in Delhi. This is very sad and unfortunate. The criminals have become fearless, and there is no fear of the police.”
Swati Maliwal, from the Delhi Commission for Women, said the capital had become “extremely unsafe” for girls and women and that she had “never seen anything more horrifying than this in my career of so many years”.
“There were so many people when the murder took place, but no one helped the girl. Even if they would have shouted, maybe the girl could have survived,” said Maliwal.
The incident once again raised the issue of women’s safety in India, particularly at the hands of their partners.
