A12 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.TUESDAY, AUGUST 20 , 2019
well-off people would be trapped
in the name of love” by what he
called “miscreants.”
Chilukuri said his group was
not formed to support Amrutha’s
father. He paused for a mo-
ment. “Do you want to meet
him?” He picked up his phone
and called Rao, who is out on bail
pending the start of his trial,
which is expected to begin by
September.
Amrutha’s father was around
the corner at a small cafe. A
short, paunchy man with a mus-
tache and gold-rimmed glasses,
Rao sat down briefly with a
reporter at a small plastic table
but declined to speak on the
record, citing legal advice. His
lawyer, Ravinder Reddy, declined
to comment. In the 56-page main
charging document, police cite
overwhelming evidence linking
Rao to the murder and say he
confessed to the crime on
Sept. 30.
A.V. Ranganath, the superin-
tendent of police for Nalgonda
district, said the politician who
acted as a middleman between
Rao and the killers had inadver-
tently activated the automatic
call-recording feature on his An-
droid phone. Such recordings
will be “quite helpful” in court,
Ranganath said.
Pranay’s father, Balaswamy,
53, said the family wants to see
Rao punished to deter future
such killings. As he spoke, he
cradled his grandson Nihan in
the crook of his arm, holding the
baby’s chin with one hand to
better plant an affectionate kiss
on his cheek. Balaswamy can be
seen using the exact same ges-
ture for Pranay in a video taken
during his son’s wedding recep-
tion a year ago.
When it came time to deliver
the couple’s baby, the family
decided that for safety reasons it
was better to go to a hospital in
Hyderabad, a major city three
hours away. But when the family
sought a temporary apartment
there, Balaswamy said, several
landlords declined to rent to
them after learning they were
Dalits. Caste discrimination is
something “we are facing regu-
larly,” he said.
Amrutha says Pranay’s parents
are now like her own. “My father
was the reason for his death,” she
said. But Pranay’s parents “know
how we loved each other.”
[email protected]B. Kartheek contributed to this
report.ning, crying, back to the hospital
for help.
Before she fainted, she called
her father. “Somebody attacked
Pranay,” she said. “What did you
do?”A supportive community
The murder divided Miry-
alaguda. Hundreds of people,
mostly Dalits, came to the home
of Pranay’s family after his death
to extend their support. They
discussed installing a small stat-
ue of the young man to memori-
alize him.
But others rallied to the cause
of Amrutha’s father. “The murder
happened because their love
started when they were in ninth
[grade], and he was killed be-
cause their love was not en-
dorsed,” said Bhupathi Raju,
honorary president of the Arya
Vysya Association in the nearby
city of Nalgonda. He formed a
“Parents Protection Association”
and gathered hundreds of people
to visit Rao while he was in jail.
A lawyer in Miryalaguda, Shy-
am Sunder Chilukuri, formed his
own similar group. “This is an
incident where a [Scheduled
Caste] guy intimidated her and
married her,” he said. “There is a
chance that other daughters ofgroup known for its openness to
inter-caste unions. About five
months later, Amrutha discov-
ered she was pregnant, so they
postponed the idea of leaving
home. They also decided to orga-
nize a reception to celebrate their
marriage.
Hundreds of people attended
the festivities on Aug. 17, 2018,
but Amrutha’s parents were no-
tably absent. Rao, her father, had
already begun to plot Pranay’s
murder, court documents say.
The month before, he agreed to
pay $150,000 to have his son-in-
law killed, using a local political
leader as an intermediary. Rao,
57, passed along a photo of the
pair from their reception invita-
tion to make it easier for the
killers to identify Pranay, the
documents allege.
On Sept. 14, Amrutha, Pranay
and his mother, Premalatha,
were leaving Jyothi Hospital af-
ter an appointment with Am-
rutha’s obstetrician. In video cap-
tured by a closed-circuit camera,
the couple looked relaxed as they
chatted and strolled toward the
street. The killer walked up be-
hind them and struck two blows.
The video shows Amrutha rais-
ing her hands to her head in
shock and confusion, then run-want you to marry from a lower
caste, whoever it is.”
When the two were in college
— Pranay pursuing an engineer-
ing degree and Amrutha study-
ing fashion — she became fright-
ened that her parents were ma-
neuvering to marry her to some-
one else. She got word to Pranay
that she wanted to elope.
On Jan. 30, 2018, when her
mother went for a midday rest,
Amrutha picked up a backpack
she had prepared. It contained a
cream-colored dress she had re-
ceived for her birthday, her
school certificates and her iden-
tity card. She went down the
stairs to the street, where Pranay
was waiting, just as he had
promised.A brutal murder
Amrutha and Pranay were
afraid, but they had a plan. They
submitted their applications for
passports and studied for an
English proficiency test. They
hoped to go to Australia and
perhaps realize Pranay’s dream
of starting a business — a fashion
studio or even a dairy farm.
The couple had married in the
presence of only a few friends at a
temple in Hyderabad run by the
Arya Samaj, a Hindu reformistDalits, who make up almost
17 percent of India’s population
of more than 1.3 billion, are at the
bottom of India’s caste hierarchy.
After centuries of subjugation,
they have made inroads into
politics, higher education and
business, partly through affirma-
tive action.
But as Pranay and Amrutha’s
story shows, a modicum of
upward mobility does not
mean they can marry whom they
want or live where they want.
They continue to do India’s most
stigmatized and dangerous work.
They face discrimination in the
job market and huge hurdles in
owning land. India has “given
one person one vote,” said Paul
Divakar, general secretary of the
National Campaign on Dalit Hu-
man Rights. But it has not “given
each human being the same
value.”
When Amrutha started high
school, her parents told her not
to make friends with girls from
lower castes, particularly Dalits,
who are officially referred to as
Scheduled Castes. Amrutha’s
family are Arya Vysya, a group
that is part of the Komati caste,
traditionally a trading communi-
ty.
The complexities of the Indian
caste system were far from Am-
rutha’s mind when she went to a
movie in the ninth grade with a
group of friends. She recognized
Pranay from school, where he
was a year ahead of her, jovial
and athletic. Afterward they
started texting and talking over
the phone.
Their growing friendship had
immediate consequences. When
Amrutha’s father found out, she
said, he beat her for the first —
but not the last — time. He took
away her mobile phone and lap-
top and moved her to a different
school. Over the next six years,
Amrutha and Pranay would see
each other only briefly on a
handful of occasions.
For Amrutha’s father, the mar-
riage of his only daughter was an
obsession. “I can even marry you
to a beggar who belongs to an
upper caste,” Amrutha remem-
bers him telling her. “But I don’tdecades. The results surprised
the researchers, who had expect-
ed to see “more intermingling of
the different castes,” said Tridip
Ray, a statistician and the lead
author. “Unfortunately, that’s not
happening.”
In India, transgressing such
boundaries sometimes provokes
violence. Since late June, killings
of men and women who married
outside their caste have been
reported in the states of Guja-
rat, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh
and Andhra Pradesh. The daugh-
ter of a politician from India’s
ruling party recently posted a
video on social media seeking
protection from her father after
she married a Dalit man against
her family’s wishes.
Such violent reprisals are
“passed off in the name of tradi-
tion and honor,” said Uma
Chakravarti, a renowned histo-
rian and expert on caste and
gender. But the motives go far
deeper, she said. If a woman can
choose whom she wants to marry
— including a Dalit man — it
“destabilizes the entire system”
that perpetuates inequality.
A forbidden love
On a recent morning, Am-
rutha — a slim young woman
with a heart-shaped face — sat in
the living room of the house she
shares with Pranay’s parents.
Next to her was a screen showing
images from closed-circuit cam-
eras: the front door, the street,
the corner where a large mango
tree towers over the home. Her
son, a plump 6-month-old with
his father’s smile, sat on her lap.
The house sits near the edge of
a Dalit neighborhood and repre-
sents the middle-class stability
won by Pranay’s father, Balas-
wamy, who has worked as a clerk
at the Life Insurance Corpora-
tion of India for the past three
decades. Amrutha grew up a
five-minute drive away in a large
building owned by her father, a
wealthy real estate developer in
this city of 100,000 surrounded
by rice mills in the state of
Telangana.
INDIA FROM A
Born into different castes,
a young Indian couple
fall dangerously in love
JOANNA SLATER/THE WASHINGTON POST
Amrutha Varshini and her son live with her late husband Pranay Perumalla’s parents in Miryalaguda.
The couple had wanted to leave India but postponed plans when Amrutha learned she was pregnant.Get a FREE Customized Quote Today
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