Like any young groom, Ajay Mann had been looking forward to his wedding. But the night before the nuptials he was shot dead, another victim in a spate of bizarre and apparently random killings that has sent the murder rate in India’s capital spiralling at a disturbing rate.
Mann, 22, had thrown a party on the eve of the big day at a north Delhi hotel. It was in full swing when two of his friends stepped up to the DJ booth and demanded he play their choice of music. When he refused, the pair left, only to return a couple of hours later to shoot him dead. Mann’s murder was one of 518 in the city last year — up 11 percent from 467 the year before. Police say that the majority of the killings had taken place for “absolutely ridiculous” reasons.
While the authorities have not offered an explanation for the sharp rise, psychologists believe that it stems from the stresses and strains of living in one of the world’s largest and most chaotic cities, where tens of thousands of migrants have arrived seeking to profit from India’s economic boom.
In the space of one year, a boy was battered to death with his own cricket bat because he would not admit he had been bowled out; a man was beaten to death with iron rods for complaining about the goat his neighbors had tethered outside his house; and a chef was fatally stabbed for refusing to serve poppadoms to diners in his restaurant.
Rajat Mitra, a clinical psychologist who has worked alongside the police in Delhi, said some people simply did not know how to behave in a city.
“Compared with western society, India is still very tribal. We don’t hold back our emotions and we escalate very fast,” he said.
“In the village you are supposed to go to the elders to resolve a dispute, but you don’t have a system like that in the city. What you do instead is resolve it on your own. You are carrying a village mentality into the cities and there is no introduction to people how to live in a city,” he said.
Mitra said the problem was magnified because Indians did not trust the police to settle disputes.
It seems that the more trivial the dispute, the more likely it was to end in violence. Police commissioner YS Dadwal said more people were killed in minor squabbles than died as a result of planned crimes.
The list included a man who killed his sister-in-law for not washing his clothes; a security guard who murdered a colleague for failing to turn up on time to take over from him; and the owner of a roadside food stall who was murdered by a customer for accidentally splashing water on his clothes.
“Many murders took place in a fit of rage without any planning,” Dadwal said. “Most of those who committed the crime neither had a criminal motive nor were criminals. They happened due to absolutely ridiculous reasons.”
Psychologists believe it is all a result of people struggling to cope with the rapid transition from life in a traditional agrarian society to a high-pressure urban lifestyle.
Delhi’s murder rate comfortably outstrips that of London, where there were 167 murders last year in a population of 7.5 million, a rate of one per 44,910 people. In Delhi, with a population of about 14 million, the rate was one per 27,027.
Delhi police claimed an 82 percent clear-up rate for murders last year, but the most notorious murder remained unsolved. In May, a 14-year-old girl, Aarushi Talwar, was found dead in her bedroom, her throat cut.
Police pointed the finger at a missing servant, only to discover his body also in the house. The girl’s father, Rajesh Talwar, a dentist, was then arrested and injected with a “truth serum” in the hope of getting him to confess.
When this failed, he was released. Police have identified three suspects, but eight months on are no closer to filing charges. Police are also struggling to make headway in the case of journalist Soumya Viswanathan, who was on her way home from the Headlines Today television news channel when she was shot dead in her car.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS