The classmates say that she dreamed of becoming a policewoman. Neha Paswan, 17, dressed like many peers from her country, poised between contemporaneity and retrograde traditions: she wore jeans and a T-shirt, instead of a sari or a feminine suit with a long blouse and wide pants. But, unlike the young women of the metropolises, Neha lived in Savreji Kharg, a village in the district of Deoria, one of the most backward regions of Uttar Pradesh. Her paternal grandparents often scolded her for daring to take part in prayers in that “bold” dress and pressured her to drop out of school. A few days ago, the girl was found dead.
It was her mother, Shakuntala Devi Paswan, who triggered the search after she reported to the local police that her paternal grandfather and some uncles had beaten her daughter to death, and then promised to take her to the hospital. But Neha never arrived at the hospital: her body, lifeless, was hanging from a bridge, a few kilometers away from the village. The autopsy revealed that the girl had had her skull cracked by beatings.
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The umpteenth tragic story of an India struggling against the persistence of a patriarchal and violent culture is traveling around the world after the BBC relaunched it on its website. After the denunciation of Neha’s mother, who raises the children alone because her husband, Amarnath Paswan, works in Punjab, the police arrested four people, her paternal grandfather, two uncles and the driver who took the girl away, and indicted six others, suspected of having played an active role in the murder.
Violence against women, especially at home, is still an endemic phenomenon in the country, especially in rural areas, the most backward. The network is teeming with videos that, unfortunately, to no avail, denounce these unacceptable episodes and receive indignant comments. The associations rely on violence against women and report that the police arrest the alleged perpetrators, often reluctantly; but which, just as often, releases them shortly after, without trial or conviction.
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