21-year-old pregnant Muslim woman was allegedly burnt to death by her family for eloping and marrying a Dalit man in north Karnataka’s Vijayapura district, police said on Tuesday.
Banu Begum ran away from her home in Gundakanala village with her lover Sayabanna Konnur, who hails from the Valmiki caste two weeks ago, and the couple got married in Goa, police said.
Banu’s family was enraged and lodged a case under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act but police dropped the investigation as she was an adult. This further angered the woman’s relatives, police said.
The couple returned home last week but on Saturday, the woman’s family barged into their house and allegedly set her ablaze, police said. Konnur also sustained injuries in the incident and has been hospitalised.
Daqneesh’s father told the reporter his son was in good health in Aleppo - now under the control of President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. He said he had cut his son’s hair and changed his name to protect him from being kidnapped and accused rebels of intimidating the family.
It was not clear whether the family had been coerced into taking part in the short video posted on Facebook, the first time the boy had been seen publicly since he was wounded.
