How many of us think that parents come closest to God? Love and respect to one’s parents would give us peace of mind. Father is compared to Heaven and Religion. He is placed at a higher pedestal than all Gods combined. Mother and Motherland is placed at a higher pedestal than Heaven and Paradise. Somewhere these values are changing and with changing time and modern era we have become scavengers. Some children have gone so wrong that they are killing their own parents or throwing them out of the house to die. We have example of Shravan Kumar or Lord Rama for their pure love for parents. Our cultural values are decaying and we are becoming more insensitive and inhuman. Perhaps that is the reason, butchering parents, kids, human lives become news, and we read and forget. We have no time to react or restore to basic humanity.
India has seen some pretty terrible and mysterious cases of murder and killing within the family. The unfathomable aspect of a family, turning on itself so destructively, has always caught the attention of the public and the media. A lot of the times, it’s for ‘honour’, though these killers seem like the last people to know anything about the word. Some of the worst cases have been of the parents themselves killing their children, and unfortunately it’s not as uncommon as one would hope. Here are some famous cases of parents murdering their children and children murdering their parents, husband killing his wife and wife killing her husband.
One such news of a professor has gone viral; he pushed off his old mother from the terrace of his building. Sandip Nathwani, who teaches in a local Pharmacy college, pushed his mother Jayshreeben to death on September 29 as he was “fed up” with her illness. Sandip initially denied the allegation made against him, but later “confessed” to his involvement in the crime.
There was another incidence, a 55-year-old woman in Bhayander West, who paid Rs 50,000 to get her own son killed. The mother was fed up with her drug addict son Ramcharan, who used to sexually abuse her for over six months. It was unbearable when Ramcharan began abusing her daily. She informed her elder son Sitaram about Ramcharan’s activity and hatched a plan to get rid of him. On August 20, 2017, Sitaram roped in his two friends Rakesh Yadav and Keshav Mistry. The trio killed Ramcharan and dumped his body under water.
Kerala youth Cadell Jeanson Raja murdered his father, mother, sister and a relative; he claimed that he was attempting astral projection. Raja claimed that he is a Satan worshiper. Cadell first killed his mother in the bedroom on the first floor of their two-storey house. He then killed his father Raja Thangam and his sister Caroline, one after another, when they returned home. Cadell Jeanson murdered his aunt Lalitha Jain in another room. The police found it quite strange that Cadell’s aunt stayed in the same house where three murders happened for three days till she was murdered. After the murders, Cadell ensured that the floor was wiped clean of blood and all evidences are destroyed. Cadell Jeanson Raja went around the town swiftly, evading the police post the murders. Cadell lived in his house for another three days with the bodies and told neighbours that others in the family were out on a leisure trip.
A 48-year-old professor strangulated his marketing executive wife and then tried to stab himself to death over being suspicions about her “character” in Kalyan, Mumbai. After killing his 37-year-old wife Vidya, Sanjay Teli called up his younger son, Atul (19), to confess to the crime and told him of his intention to end his own life as well. Thereafter, the professor, who teaches in a Mumbai junior college, switched off his mobile phone. On hearing of his plan, Atul rushed home to find his father lying in a pool of blood and his mother dead.
In Kolkata, infuriated over his father’s alleged delay in arranging funds for his engineering studies abroad, a 28-year-old youth bludgeoned his father to death. The victim Subhasis Sanyal (60) was watching television relaxing on the bed when his son Arnab hit him several times on the head with an iron dumbbell resulting in his death. He was constantly pressuring his father to send him abroad for further studies. His father had told him that he needed some time to arrange the money as studying abroad calls for a huge expense.
A wife of a TV mogul arrested for the murder of her daughter, who she claimed was her sister. The wife’s second husband has now been arrested and so is her driver. But yet no one knows why Sheena Bora was killed more than two years ago.
The 2008 Noida double murder of a teenage girl and a house help is one of India’s murkiest murder mysteries. Fourteen-year-old Aarushi Talwar was found murdered in her house on May 16, 2008. As the servant Hemraj went missing, he was the prime suspect in the case only till his decomposed body was discovered on the terrace, a day later. The case grabbed headlines as a whodunit story. Aarushi’s parents — Dr Rajesh and Nupur Talwar — both dentists — were then looked at as prime suspects and were arrested. Rumour mills have been abuzz with theories of honour killing, the Talwars having extra-marital affairs, wife swapping and more.
Residents of Faridabad, Pushpa Kohli paid her brother Kulwinder, a police officer, to kill her daughter Kiran. According to the police, Pushpa said she did it because her daughter ‘drank, smoked and visited clubs’. Kulwinder slit her throat.
In 2014, Bhawna Yadav, who attended Sri Venkateswara College in Delhi, was killed days after marrying Abhishek, a Punjabi. Her parents, who were very conservative about inter-caste marriages, strangled their daughter rather than seeing her marry a Punjabi. Apparently, the mother strangled her while her father held her by the feet.
Deepti Chhikara, a 26 year old school teacher, was married off to someone against her wishes. After she returned from her in-laws, within a month, her mother, brother and uncle strangled her to death and dumped her body in Roorkee, all in the name of honour.
There are thousands of stories; these days, children are killing parents having no mercy and parents too are killing their own kids for different reasons. Husband killing wife and wife is killing husband. Human lives have become robotic. No emotions, no values and no gratitude. We are living a life of hidden monster. I find cases of people killing their parents very disturbing and unsettling.
(This is the first part of the editorial and the remaining portion will continue tomorrow)
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