A young Indian couple married for love. Then the bride's father hired assassins.
MIRYALAGUDA, India — They were young, glamorous and dreamily in love.
Pranay Perumalla strode into the wedding hall in a midnight blue suit, his face lit by a grin as he clasped the hand of his bride, Amrutha Varshini. The couple draped huge garlands of flowers around one another’s necks and relatives threw grains of yellow rice that caught in their dark hair.
But even as they celebrated, they were already in danger.
One bright afternoon less than a month later, the couple left a doctor’s appointment in the small southern Indian city where they grew up. A man came up behind them carrying a large butcher knife in his right hand. He hacked Pranay twice on the head and neck, killing him instantly.
Pranay, 23, was a Dalit, a term used to describe those formerly known as “untouchables.” Amrutha, 21, belongs to an upper caste. Her rich and powerful family viewed the couple’s union as an unacceptable humiliation. Her father, T. Maruthi Rao, was so enraged that he hired killers to murder his son-in-law, court documents say.
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For Amrutha’s father, the marriage of his only daughter was an obsession. “I can even marry you to a beggar who belongs to an upper caste,” Amrutha remembers him telling her. “But I don’t want you to marry from a lower caste, whoever it is.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/a-young-indian-couple-married-for-love-then-the-brides-father-hired-assassins/2019/08/19/3d1ce9a0-a1d0-11e9-a767-d7ab84aef3e9_story.html
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