Man smothers daughter to death in honour killing

THE reported suicide of a 16-year-old girl in Madurai district, Tamil Nadu, after she eloped with a youth has turned out to be a case of honour killing, Makkal Osai reported.

Police arrested her father on the charge of smothering the girl to death with a pillow during her sleep.

The incident came to light last Thursday when police found that the girl had not committed suicide by consuming poison as her parents had claimed.

Police said the girl’s father, a labourer, had confessed to killing her and placing a bottle of poison to make it look like a case of suicide.

The girl had been waiting for her examination results when she ran away with a 22-year-old man from the same village on May 16.

> MIC deputy president Datuk Seri Dr S. Subramaniam said Malaysians must continue to adopt the give-and-take attitude and respect each other to preserve harmony, Tamil Nesan reported.

He said Malaysia, which was well known for its multiracial society, would face irreparable damage if racial and religious sensitivities were disregarded.

Speaking to reporters after attending a fund-raising drive for the Yogi Ramsurat Kumar Association in Petaling Jaya on Saturday, Dr Subramaniam said disrespect for other religions could erode unity and national stability.

> Gujarat Chief Minister Anandi Patel has appealed for more centralised kitchens to feed children to be built in the northern Indian state rather than temples, Malaysia Nanban reported.

She said the provision of quality food for children under the state’s mid-day meal scheme could drastically cut the dropout rate.

She was speaking after inaugurating a fully-automated kitchen built by an NGO at Bhadaj village in Ahmedabad.

The centralised kitchen, spread across 0.5ha, is one of the biggest in the country and can prepare 200,000 meals within five hours with the help of large machines and boilers.

Food prepared in the kitchen would be sent to government-run schools and nurseries within a 100km radius as mid-day meals for school children.

Found in translation is compiled from the vernacular newspapers (Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese and Tamil dailies). As such, stories are grouped according to the respective language/medium. Where a paragraph begins with a >, it denotes a separate news item.