Indian man, Oghad Singh, unapologetic after beheading daughter over her lifestyle, police say
(CBS/AP) JAIPUR, India -Marble miner Oghad Singh of northwestern India remained unapologetic Tuesday after beheading his 20-year-old daughter Manju Kanwar with a sword in a rage over her relationships with men, police said.
"It was a ghastly sight," officer Ranjit Singh said, describing the father sitting in the station's waiting room holding the head in one hand and the sword in the other. "Oghad admitted immediately that he killed his daughter because she had earned a bad name for the family."
Residents of Dungarji village performed the last rites for Kanwar. A coroner stitched Kanwar's head onto her body for the funeral. About 100 men, many of them relatives wearing ceremonial Rajput warrior clan turbans, surrounded her muslin-wrapped body and her brother lit the funeral pyre.
Women wailing in grief lined the dusty road of the village in Rajasthan state as a procession carried Kanwar's remains to her funeral pyre. As in many north and west Indian villages, the women, including her mother and four sisters, were not allowed to attend the funeral.
Villagers condemned the father's actions as extreme. They said the father, his shirt soaked in blood, had carried his daughter's head through the village describing what he'd done to neighbors.
"He told me that he took the sword out and when the daughter was all alone in the house he beheaded her with a single stroke and the head fell on the ground," said Narayan Singh, a distant relative.
He said he persuaded Singh to surrender and took him by motorcycle to a police station two miles away.
Police described Kanwar's recent life as difficult and unorthodox for the traditional community of about 1,000 just outside the Rajasthani tourist town of Udaipur. She left her husband from an arranged marriage two years ago and moved back home to live with her parents. She recently began seeing several other men which "disgusted" her father, deputy police superintendent Umesh Ojha said.
"Oghad said he was fed up with the lifestyle of his daughter," Ojha said.
When Manju eloped with one man two weeks ago, her father forced her to return on Sunday and killed her.
Police charged Singh, 46, with murder.
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June 18, 2012 - Indian man beheads daughter with sword in rage over her lifestyle, police say