COIMBATORE: A special court in Coimbatore on Wednesday sentenced a 30-year-old man to death for murdering his brother and the latter’s 16-year-old girlfriend in a 2019 ‘honour killing’ case. The court — set up for trying offences under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act — had last week found the man (Vinothkumar of Mettupalayam) guilty of double murder.
Terming it a “rarest of rare case in the name of caste”, sessions judge K Vivekananthan awarded death sentence to Vinothkumar on Wednesday. As per the prosecution, Vinothkumar’s younger brother Kanagaraj (22), belonging to Most Backward Community, had decided to marry his minor girlfriend (16) belonging to Scheduled Caste (SC) community.
But Vinothkumar, a daily wager, objected to this marriage claiming that he would not get a bride if Kanagaraj married a girl from the SC community.
Due to opposition and threat from his elder brother, Kanagaraj moved to a house at Sri Rangarayan Odai at Vellipalayam near Mettupalayam on June 22, 2019. Three days later, on June 25, 2019, Vinothkumar went to their house at 5.15 pm after discussing his plan with his friends, and attacked the couple.
While Kanagaraj was killed on the spot, the girl died four days later at a hospital. His friends — Kanthavel, Iyappan and Chinnaraj — who had allegedly promised to assist Vinothkumar before and after the murder, were arrested. While the court convicted Vinothkumar of double murder, it acquitted the trio due to lack of evidence during the hearing on January 23.