Postman and his wife poisoned, strangled, and secretly CREMATED their daughter, 19, 'because she wanted to marry outside her caste'

Victim: Manjit Singh, pictured, was murdered after eloping for a forbidden marriage

In yet another case of so-called 'honour' killing in Haryana, a postman and his wife poisoned, strangled and then tried to secretly cremate their 19-year-old daughter after she had eloped with a youth she wanted to marry.



Haryana Police on Monday arrested Mahender Singh (45) and his wife Mahindro (42) from Bapa village of Yamunanagar district.



"The two admitted to murdering their daughter and have been arrested. We have also sent the half-burnt body for post-mortem," Sandeep Kumar, SHO, Radaur police station said.

According to the police, the incident took place on late Saturday night. The two first poisoned Manjit, then strangled her to death after she fell unconscious. Around 6.30am, they took the dead body to the village crematorium to be burned, in order to destroy the evidence.



However, two constables reached the spot after receiving a call from one of the neighbours. The audacious family members beat up the policemen and snatched their mobile phones.



"The constables somehow managed to inform us and we reached the spot with a police team. We stopped the cremation and the half-burnt dead body was pulled out from the pyre," Kumar said.

Sources said the deceased, Manjit, had an affair with her neighbour Jaswinder. She had run away with him on September 22 and was living in Ludhiana where Jaswinder works.

Manjit's family members had traced the couple and brought her back on Thursday.



This is the third case of honour killing in Haryana within two weeks. The cause this time is not that the couple were from the same clan, but that theirs was an inter-caste relationship.



Manjit's parents tried to secretly cremate her body (not pictured), but were caught red-handed by the police

While Manjit was from a backward class, Jaswinder belonged to a Scheduled Caste category.



On September 23, a 19-year-old Dalit girl was killed in Bapoli village of Panipat district by her father for marrying an upper caste Gujjar boy.

