A 27-year old Dalit software engineer was hacked to death in broad daylight on July 29 at Tirunelveli. The victim, Kavin Selva Ganesh, was allegedly murdered by the brother of a woman he had been in a long-term relationship with. Soon after the incident, the accused 21-year old Surjith surrendered to the police for attacking Kavin. A day later, Surjith’s police parents, sub inspectors Saravanan and Krishnakumari, have also been named as co-accused in the case for allegedly inciting the crime and threatening Kavin. The case has now been handed over to the CBCID for further investigation.
The ghastly incident has shaken the people of Tamil Nadu, the social media calls it caste hegemony, the family of the victim Kavin are running for justice, the parents and the brother of the girl have been arrested and lodged in prison. But Kavin may not be the last victim of the caste and honour killings in Tamil Nadu. While some cases, like Kavin’s, have hogged the headlines for a longer time, a few have even vanished from the public memory in time and some have not even been reported at all.
Tamil Nadu has witnessed at least one hundred chilling cases of honour killings in the past two decades. Between 2014 and 2024, a total of 59 honour killing cases have been documented in the police records, according to Evidence, a Madurai based NGO. Only a handful of these cases have progressed to court trials and final verdicts have been pronounced only in two cases. In these cases, either of the two partners have been from the Dalit community and he or she was murdered either by the family of the upper caste partner or by the male partner himself.
In the recent past, the first chilling case of honour killing that led to violence in Dharmapuri was the most infamous Ilavarasan-Divya case. Ilavarasan’s body was found on the railway tracks, while Divya’s father died by suicide. Ilavarasan was from the Dalit community while Divya was from the intermediate Vanniyar community. While Ilavarasan’s death was widely suspected to be honour killing the Singaravelu Commission which probed his death concluded that it was a case of suicide.
Even when this case inquiry was underway, on June 23, 2015, a 21-year-old Dalit engineering graduate, Gokulraj, was abducted from a temple in Tiruchengode near Namakkal district when he was with Swathi, a woman from the Kongu Vellalar community. The Kondu Vellalars are regarded as the dominant community in West Tamil Nadu. A day later Gokulraj’s body was discovered with a severed head on a railway track. In this case, Yuvaraj, founder of a caste-based organisation, Maaveeran Theeran Chinnamalai Gounder Peravai, was arrested. He is still in prison
On March 13, 2016, Shankar, a 22-year-old Dalit man from Komaralingam, Tiruppur, was brutally killed in broad daylight when he was walking on the road with his newlywed 19-year-old wife Kausalya. The killing was orchestrated by Kausalya’s parents, B. Chinnasamy and Annalakshmi, of the Piranmalai Kallar caste, an MBC community in west Tamil Nadu. Kausalya, who was grievously injured, got treated and fought legally leading to the arrest of 11 people, including her parents. In December 2017, the Principal District and Sessions Court, Tiruppur, sentenced her father Chinnasamy and five others to death who were later acquitted by the Madras High Court.
Another tragic case was the double murder of Kannagi and Murugesan in 2003. Almost 22 years after the killing of the couple, the Supreme Court termed it as a “wicked and odious crime.” The apex court upheld the life sentence given to Kannagi’s father, brother and two police officers. Kannagi and Murugesan were harassed in public and was force-fed poison by the Kannagi’s relatives, whose sentence has been upheld by the apex court.
While Tamil Nadu always boasts itself as the cradle of Dravidian culture, the honour of the caste is always tied to a man marrying from his own community and the chastity of a woman. A land that prides itself for progressiveness and said to have its foundations on equality and inclusivity, has unapologetically placed caste above all. And this might not change anytime soon, given the pride associated with caste.