A Murder Divides A Village
India Today|July 24, 2017

Hatred spread by social media videos, an elopement and self-styled guardians of honour. The poisonous mix results in the murder of a man for his religious identity.

Kaushik Deka
A Murder Divides A Village

The geographical boundary of Sohi, a nondescript village near Pahasu in Uttar Pradesh’s Bulandshahr, starts with a narrow irrigation canal brimming with monsoon water. At the juncture where the village road, punctuated with muddy potholes, meets the canal, is a dense mango orchard. The serenity of the orchard and the road snaking through the village are a deceptive façade for a village that has been simmering with communal tension in the wake of an elopement and a mysterious murder.

On the night of April 26, Yusuf, 25, ran away with Sonia, a 20-year old Hindu girl from the neighbouring Fazalpur village. According to Hanifa, one of the 35 Muslims living in Sohi, which has a population of 3,000, the next morning, members of the Hindu Yuva Vahini (HYV), an outfit founded by UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath, threatened the four Muslim families in the village to “find and hand over Yusuf and Sonia or face death”.

This story is from the July 24, 2017 edition of India Today.

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This story is from the July 24, 2017 edition of India Today.

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