Indian father ‘unrepentant’ for beheading daughter with sword over men

Oghad Singh, 46, was charged with murder following his surrender at a police station, carrying the head in one hand and the bloodied sword in the other.

Residents of Dungarji village, a traditional community near the Rajasthani town of Udaipur, expressed shock as they performed the last rites for 20-year-old Manju Kanwar, who died on Monday.

Police said Singh, a marble miner, had accused his daughter, who had left her husband from an arranged marriage two years ago, of bringing dishonour and making it hard to find husbands for her two unmarried sisters.

When she had eloped with one man two weeks ago, her father forced her to return on Sunday, killing her the next day.

A coroner stitched Kanwar’s head on to 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.

“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.