Kongara Nagamani, a 27-year-old police constable from Hyderabad, was still speaking to her husband Bandari Srikanth, 28, on the phone when he heard the loud thud. “She said ‘My brother… he’s just hit my scooter with a car. He’s going to kill me’, before the line went quiet,” Srikanth tells The Indian Express. On December 1, Nagamani was allegedly hacked to death by her 24-year-old brother Paramesh and another accomplice, Achana Shiva, in Raipole village, Ibrahimpatnam, on the outskirts of Hyderabad. Paramesh has been arrested for the murder while Shiva is currently absconding. According to the family, it was a case of honour killing. Nagamani belonged to Golla Kuruma, categorised among the Backward Classes in Telangana – the largest caste group in the village. On the other hand, Srikanth was a Dalit from the Mala sub-caste. Nagamani’s family vehemently opposed her marriage to a “lower caste” man, Srikanth, who has just returned to his family home in Raipole after immersing Nagamani’s ashes into the nearby stream, says. “We hadn’t even registered our marriage,” he says. In one corner of the courtyard is a large blue poster bearing a smiling Nagamani in an azure saree. Over her are the words “Rest in Peace”. Srikanth and Nagamani were classmates at Raipole Zilla Parishad High School for 12 years and, according to him, it’s there that they fell in love. She was 13 when her father died due to an illness in 2011. Her mother had passed away in 2005, and orphans Nagamani and her three siblings – including brother Paramesh – went to live with her uncle’s family. Soon, her family forcibly married the still-minor Nagamani to a much older man from her own caste. The marriage failed, and she walked out in 2017. Her family opposed her decision, says Srikanth. “That year, she gifted her brother the one-acre of family land she had received during her wedding and did not return home,” he says. Soon after walking out of her marriage, Nagamani began living at a working woman’s hostel in Hyderabad and preparing for her competitive exams to become a constable. She finally achieved her dream in 2020 and in 2022, she divorced her husband after years of pursuing the matter in police stations and courts. Through it all, Srikanth, who did odd jobs after finishing his Class 12, stood by her, helping to finance her coaching classes and accommodation. “It was her mother’s wish to see her as a police constable. She worked hard for that,” he said. On November 10, after years of trying to persuade Nagamani’s side of the family and also securing jobs, the two solemnised their marriage at the local Yadagirigutta temple. That day, the two approached the local police seeking protection. “Paramesh and the family were called to the police station and they were given counselling to accept the marriage and not create any problems for the couple,” a police officer says. On the day she was killed, the newly-weds were returning to Hyderabad after spending the previous weekend at Srikanth’s house in Raipole. Srikanth, a lab technician with the state agriculture department, was first to leave in his car at 8:20 am, and it was decided that Nagamani, who was posted at Hyderabad’s Hayathnagar Police Station, would follow soon on her two-wheeler. According to Srikanth, Nagamani’s house was on her way back to Hyderabad but the couple had decided she would take a detour to avoid it. But Paramesh and his accomplice were allegedly prepared for this and were waiting for her. “It is a premeditated, cold-blooded caste murder,” says Srikanth. However, the police claim there could be another angle to the killing – a dispute over the one-acre property that was gifted to Nagamani at her first wedding. Nagamani had allegedly demanded that Paramesh return the land to her after her wedding to Srikanth, and, thinking that his family would be made a mockery of following his sister’s marriage, “he hatched a plan to eliminate her, purchased a knife and kept it in his car, waiting for a chance of her visit to Raipole”, Inspector Bollam Satyanarayana, the Station House Officer of the Ibrahimpatnam Police Station, said in a press statement issued on December 3. D Sunitha Reddy, deputy commissioner of Maheshwaram zone - under which Ibrahimpatnam falls - too agrees that it’s a case of “honour killing as well as property dispute”. But Srikanth and his family deny that the land had anything to do with the killing, calling this an attempt to “lessen the quantum of punishment for the killers”. “Now they are bringing up the claim that the murder was a result of a property dispute between siblings. It’s not. It’s a case of caste killing,” he claims. At Hayathnagar Police Station, Nagamani’s colleagues describe her as a “go-getter who took work as a challenge”. It’s a description her husband Srikanth agrees with. “She was a self-respecting and a daring individual,” he says. On Friday evening, a group of high court advocates joined villagers of Raipole to hold a candlelight march to protest Nagamani’s killing. At least a hundred people marched through the village streets to protest caste killings. “We sought protection for Srikanth and his family,” says advocate Mancharla Vishnu, who was part of the march. “For how long should such incidents keep happening again? Inter-caste marriages should be supported for a casteless society”. According to Peraka Yadaiah, a village resident, says although the different castes interact with each other on a regular basis, caste norms remain firmly in place. "Imagine, if there’s no safety for a woman police constable, what will be the plight of other women from marginalised communities?” he asks. Back at his house, Srikanth’s family is still coming to terms with what happened. Srikanth’s older brother Srinivas believes that Paramesh was “provoked by his relatives to take the extreme step”. “He (Nagamani’s brother Paramesh) must have been provoked by his relatives to take this extreme step. Otherwise, he’s just a 24-year-old. I’ve known him since he was a child,” he says.
