This past year showed that South Asia is an untapped reservoir of bizarre and macabre stories that make American true crime look tame in comparison.Crime stories from the region ranged from harrowing tales of intimate partner violence with twisted modus operandi to shocking criminal injustices perpetrated by powerful people. As police investigators connected the dots to build the case, here are 9 stories where VICE World News spoke to experts and psychologists to understand the crimes.
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1. Socialite Arrested After Horrific Beheading of Former Diplomat's Daughter
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Her murder has launched the #JusticeForNoor campaign and a #MeToo campaign against alleged sexual predators from among Jaffer’s social circle. Many have criticised recent delays in the trial proceedings and alleged reports of special treatment granted to Jaffer in jail. On Dec. 5, Kirti Avinash Thore’s estranged family decided to visit her at her farmhouse in the Indian city of Vaijapur for the first time. The 19-year-old woman had previously had a lengthy falling out with her family after she eloped and married her friend from college in June. Thore began to prepare tea for her mother and brother in the kitchen after they arrived at her home. Suddenly, Thore’s brother charged at her with a sickle in hand. Her brother proceeded to behead her with the weapon while her mother held her legs down to prevent her from moving. Thore was reportedly two months pregnant. According to reports by neighbours, Thore’s mother and brother paraded her head around the neighbourhood, after which they allegedly took a selfie with it. Police have been investigating the case as a suspected honour killing due to Thore’s family’s anger at her marriage.
2. A Pregnant Woman Was Beheaded by Her Brother and Mother. Then They Took a Selfie
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“People who commit such killings feel that the women involved have brought them dishonour and shame. They even feel a sense of pride by doing these acts,” trauma therapist Seema Hingorrany told VICE World News. “Research shows that they often feel that they will go to heaven for these acts. They believe that they have sacrificed the girl or woman to the gods and goddesses.”In a tragic case, a couple from the northeastern district of Faisalabad, Pakistan ended their lives when one of them was forced to marry someone else. The couple Muqaddas and Adnan were discovered in critical condition by Muqaddas’s family on the night of her wedding, right before the arrival of her groom. The pair had ingested poison and were declared dead on arrival when they reached the hospital. According to police, the couple had been in love but Muqaddas’ family had rejected the prospect of her marrying Adnan. In Pakistan, many traditional marriages are fixed by the couple’s families.Although young people in the country are increasingly choosing their own partners, many still balk at the notion of circumventing familial obligations. “Marriages should require emotional compatibility, which is a very basic thing that is everyone's right. The couple should first and foremost like each other,” Islamabad-based psychiatrist Abdul Wahab Yousafzai told VICE World News.
3. Young Couple Drink Poison and Die After Family Refuses to Let Them Marry
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4. Man Gets Double Life Sentence For Killing His Wife With a Cobra
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5. 12-Year-Old Falls to Death ‘Taking a Selfie.’ Police Say His Father Pushed Him.
6. Man Who Killed Mother Then Fried Her Organs Is Sentenced to Death
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Police investigations revealed that Kuchkoravi murdered his mother for money. “The present accused not only brutally killed his mother but made her naked and inflicted blows... over her private part, cut down her breast, removed her heart and other parts of body, and was prepared to eat it,” said the court order.“The intensity and the shamelessness of the act of the present accused... demands the capital punishment.”Police in the Pakistani city of Lahore arrested an Islamic cleric after a student documented his own sexual assault and released the video on social media. Two of the accused cleric’s sons were also arrested for threatening the student for leaking the video.The video showed the sexual abuse incident, and then transitioned to the survivor accusing Aziz-ur-Rehman, the custodian at his religious seminary school, of assaulting him. “I didn’t get justice, neither did anyone believe me even though I spoke to many people around me,” the student said. “I’m taking my own life.” He went on to say he had gone into hiding after receiving threats from the accused and his sons. In a video statement, Rehman initially claimed that he had been drugged during the filming. “The biggest proof is that my body was not even moving. If I were in my senses, how could I have not known that he was making a video from his phone?” Rehman said in the video. He eventually admitted to sexually assaulting the student in exchange for passing marks in his examinations. In October, Rehman and six others including his sons were indicted by a court for the case.
7. No One Believed Him, So This Student Secretly Filmed His Own Sexual Assault
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