Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 150
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 151
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Who killed Suvarna? by Johnson TA

Who killed Suvarna? by Johnson TA

Share this article Share this article
published Published on Jan 29, 2012   modified Modified on Jan 29, 2012

School girls in bright red uniforms troop down the slope in groups of threes and fours in Koppa, the fertile sugarcane town in southern Karnataka’s agricultural district of Mandya. A teenage boy on a motorcycle does the dim-and-dip with his headlights, the equivalent of a wink, as he passes the girls on his way up the slope in what seems to be a strut on a motorcycle.

“Television and mobile phones have ruined our children,” says 55-year-old Chanappa, a sugarcane farmer who has hitched a 14-km ride with me to Koppa from the highway. Through the ride, Chanappa refuses to get drawn into any conversation relating to the November 6, 2011 death of Suvarna Ramakrishna, a 20-year-old Vokkaliga girl in Abalavadi village, two km from Koppa town.

Chanappa, a Vokkaliga, knows about the death and is willing to point me in the direction of Abalavadi but won’t talk about what he has heard about the death of Suvarna, daughter of a former Abalavadi headman and local leader Davalana Ramakrishna.

Love and romance are not good words these days in Mandya despite the mass of images they bring to life through cinema and the media. Caught in the 120-km cleft between the modern Karnataka cities of Bangalore and Mysore, the district of Mandya and its people continue to cope with a feudal mindset and caste hierarchies even as their youth attempt feebly to break out.

Every month, there are dozens of cases of couples approaching the district police for protection against their family members, says Mandya’s young superintendent of police Kaushalendra Kumar. A week ago, he says, the family of a girl engaged to be married burnt down the house of a boy she was in a relationship with after the boy sent an SMS to the parents professing his love and claiming her hand in marriage. “It was a same caste relationship,” he says.

What happened in Abalavadi village on November 6, 2011 is, however, a far cry from what has ever been reported in recent times from Karnataka.

Two months after she died, under what was until now considered to be a case of suicide, the case that emerges is that of an honour killing, with Suvarna’s father and her extended family allegedly killing her for her insistence on marrying Govindaraju, a 25-year-old who belongs to the Scheduled Caste of Madigas.

The lid was blown off on January 5 when Govindaraju’s family, who was on the run after Suvarna’s death, filed an FIR with the police naming the girl’s father and members of her extended family.

The Koppa and Mandya police who bought into the suicide story earlier have now found prima facie evidence to show that there was a murder on November 6, 2011 and not a suicide. “We have witnesses and we have some of the remains of the body. Prima facie it does seem like a case of murder,” says the Mandya superintendent of police.

***

The Vokkaligas, land owners and the dominant community in Mandya region, are by nature feudal, rustic, hot headed and in-your-face. Beneath the veneer of coarseness, most people are simple too. Suvarna’s father, Davalana Ramakrishna, 46, according to descriptions provided by people in Abalavadi, was the archetypal Vokkaliga—proud, upwardly mobile, one of the 12 village wise men, a large landholder who held the right to kick-start pujas at the temple on festival days and a leader of the local unit of the Janata Dal Secular, considered the political party of the Vokkaligas. “Davalana is a feared man in the village, an authority and a landlord. He had two children, both of whom are gone now. A son committed suicide a couple of years ago when he was 18 after a fight with the father and Suvarna died last year,” says a resident of the village.

Villagers say Davalana doted on Suvarna. “She was a quiet girl who kept to herself. She was mostly home-bound. Just a few days before her death, she was engaged to a Vokkaliga boy from another village. They were to marry 15 days later. We don’t know the details of what happened after that. We heard she was seen with a Dalit boy,” says Narasimhachar, an Abalavadi resident and gram panchayat member.

According to details pieced together from various accounts of what happened at Abalavadi on November 6, it seems that Suvarna had been in love since her high school days with Govindaraju, who worked in the village and lived in a Dalit colony.

Around August 2011, the families of both Suvarna and Govindaraju seem to have got wind of their affair and while Suvarna was pulled out of college by her father, Govindaraju was sent away to work in another village by his older brother K Thimappa. Davalana also arranged for her marriage to a Vokkaliga boy from a neighbouring village .

The story goes that Suvarna set up a rendezvous with Govindaraju at a public spot a little outside the village on the afternoon of November 6 to plan an elopement but was spotted by her fiancé who alerted her father and his family.

According to the police complaint filed by Govindaraju’s brother Thimappa on January 5 this year, Suvarna’s family dragged the boy and the girl back to Abalavadi village from their rendezvous point at Arasinagere gate.

According to the FIR, Suvarna was taken to the house of one of Davalana’s relatives, Lallegowda, and thrashed there while Govindaraju was sent back to his home after a beating, only to be dragged to Lallegowda’s house.

While she was being beaten up, Suvarna insisted that she would only marry Govindaraju and that it was she who wanted to meet him that day, Govindaraju told the police in a statement last week when he briefly emerged out of hiding. An enraged Davalana, according to the police complaint, directed his relatives to “hang this girl who is insistent on marrying a Madiga”.

Police investigators say they believe Suvarna probably died after the thrashing from her father at her relative’s house but her body was dragged to Govindaraju’s house and strung up on a rope to make it seem like a suicide in the lover’s home.

Govindaraju, who was kept waiting outside his house while Suvarna’s body was being strung up, says he feared he would be next and fled, leaving his mother and two sisters-in-law behind as witnesses.

“Suvarna and I were in love but our families were opposed to it due to our castes. I am a Dalit and she is a Gowda. Her parents got her engaged. She had my phone number and kept calling me, asking me to elope with her. She said she wanted to see me just once and I agreed,” Govindaraju said in his statement to the police.

Police investigations have revealed that Suvarna’s body was cremated in the village under the cover of darkness on the evening of November 6. The story that went out said she had committed suicide.

According to the police complaint filed by Govindaraju’s brother on January 5, Davalana and his family “threatened to burn down houses and to kill anybody who dared to speak the truth about his daughter’s death”.

***

Despite the turn of events, Abalavadi and its majority Vokkaliga community remain in denial.

“There was no affair between Davalana Ramakrishna’s daughter and the Madiga boy. She did not die at the boy’s house. She committed suicide at her home that day because she was suffering from stomach cramps. Davalana was in Bangalore that day and they had to wait for him to return for the cremation, that’s why it was done after dark,” says Thimaraju, 48, a local farmer. “Those Madiga boys were contract farming on two plots of land in the village and ran up debts. That’s why they ran away from the village,” he says.

“It is Davalana who is suffering. He lost a son, then his daughter and is now on the run. His wife Latha has fallen ill after the daughter’s suicide and has gone back to her home,” says Thimmesh, another resident of Abalavadi.

“All other castes have good relationships with each other but the Madigas behave differently and have strained ties with the Vokkaligas because they borrow money and don’t pay back. They are into these love affairs,” says Narasimhachar, the panchayat member.

What has encouraged Govindaraju and his family to speak out is the support of the local unit of the Bahujan Samajwadi Party and its leader M Krishnamurthy.

So far, the police have arrested eight of the 10 family members of Davalana named in the complaint filed on January 5. They include two of Davalana’s brothers and their sons. Davalana is still on the run.

“We are asking everyone to surrender because the episode is affecting the village,” says Thimaraju. Govindaraju and his family, including his mother and two sisters-in-law who are the main witnesses to Suvarna’s death, have been living undercover since the killing. They too appeared briefly before the police to record their statements.

Amid complaints that the police are going slow in their investigations in the case because Home Minister R Ashok is also a Vokkaliga, the minister has assured effective investigations.

The Indian Express, 29 January, 2012, http://www.indianexpress.com/news/who-killed-suvarna/905010/


Related Articles

 

Write Comments

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*

Video Archives

Archives

Im4Change.org हिंदी वेबसाइट का परिचय. Short Video on im4change.org...

Im4Change.org हिंदी वेबसाइट का परिचय. Short Video on im4change.org...

"Session 1: Scope of IDEA and AgriStack" in Exploring...

"Session 2: Farmer Centric Digitalisation in Agriculture" in Exploring...

"Session 3: Future of Digitalisation in Agriculture" in Exploring...

Objectives | About Us | Workshops | Disclaimer
share on Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Feedback
Read Later

Contact Form

Please enter security code
      Close