Three get death sentence for Palghar killings

Caste marriage triggered murder of family

MUMBAI: Over three years after Dilip Tiwari, 25, and two of his aides murdered four members of a family in an honour killing in Palghar, the Bombay high court on Thursday awarded them the death penalty.

In the wee hours of May 17, 2004, Prabhu Nochil,28, his father Krishnan, 50, cousin Bijit, 13, and his friend Abhayraj, 16, were stabbed to death at Prabhu’s home in Palghar. His brother-in-law Dilip Tiwari along with Manoj Paswan and Sunil Yadav had committed the murders to avenge Prabhu’s marriage with Tiwari’s sister Sushma.

The prosecution argued that Tiwari couldn’t accept the marriage as Prabhu belonged to the Ezhava community, a backward caste in Kerala, while Sushma belonged to a north Indian Brahmin family.

After his attempts to convince Sushma to walk out of her marriage failed, Dilip and his accomplices murdered Prabhu and his family. Prabhu’s mother Indira and his sister Deepa were wounded in the attack.

The trial court on September 8, 2006, had sent the trio to the gallows. Public prosecutor Satish Borulkar and additional public prosecutor Anand Patil urged the HC to uphold the decision as the killings were motivated by caste hatred.
While Tiwari has been in custody since May 2004, Yadav and Paswan were jailed a month later.