KT Rama Rao (KTR), the working president of the Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS), on Sunday, 8 May, said that he would "surely meet and ensure all needed support is provided" to Syed Ashrin Sultana, whose husband was brutally killed in public view at Saroornagar in Hyderabad on Wednesday.
Billipuram Nagaraju, a 26-year-old Dalit man, was brutally attacked and killed by his wife's brother and another person in a case of suspected honour killing on 4 May.
On Sunday, KTR participated in a question and answer campaign on Twitter, using the hashtag #AskKTR.
A Twitter user suggested that it would be good if KTR could immediately meet Ashrin, the young Muslim woman who fought bravely to save her partner, Nagaraju, a Dalit man killed in Hyderabad a few days back. "This would be an important moral support to all inter-faith, inter-caste couples," said the user.
To this, KTR replied, "Will surely meet her and ensure all needed support is provided."
Earlier, he encouraged people to ask him questions, saying, "Am here guys. Please use #AskKTR for me to respond (sic)."
More About the Incident
The interfaith couple was attacked around 9 pm on Wednesday in a horrifying incident that was caught on CCTV. The couple, who was travelling on their two-wheeler, was pursued by the woman's brother Syed Mobin Ahmed and her relative, Mohammed Masood Ahmed, on a bike.
Nagaraju, 26, was stabbed with a knife and beaten with an iron rod. A video of the incident shows a man approaching the injured Nagaraju with an iron rod, even as his wife, Syed Ashrin Sultana, attempts to hold the assailant off. A crowd of people can also be seen surrounding the site of the murder.
The police nabbed the two accused and filed a case under IPC Section 302 (murder) and other relevant sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act in the incident.
Later, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) issued notices to the chief secretary and director general of Police, Telangana, calling for a detailed report within four weeks.
While the police said that two men were behind the attack, Sultana said five men were involved in the murder. The deceased belongs to the Mala community, categorised as a Scheduled Caste in the state.
Sultana told the media that she had been in a relationship with her husband since class 10. However, despite Nagaraju approaching her family and expressing his intention to marry her, they declined the proposal.
As Sultana's parents did not agree to their proposal, the couple got married on 31 January this year in an Arya Samaj ceremony in Hyderabad.
Suspecting that Sultana's family members were following them, the couple had shifted to Visakhapatnam for a brief period, as per reports. However, they returned to the city about a week ago.
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