An Indian teenager was recently beaten to death and hanged by her relatives, for wearing jeans.

The heart-wrenching incident happened last week in the Deoria district- one of the least developed regions in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in India, reported BBC.

According to the report, Neha Paswan, 17, was reprimanded by her grandfather and uncles for wearing a jeans during a religious festival.

"She had kept a day-long religious fast. In the evening, she put on a pair of jeans and a top and performed her rituals. When her grandparents objected to her attire, Neha retorted that jeans were made to be worn, and that she would wear it," her mother Shakuntala Devi Paswan told BBC.

The argument then escalated into violence, where Neha was beaten with sticks and rods by her relatives.

When she fell unconscious, Neha's grandparents called an autorickshaw in the pretext of her taking her hospital, and refused to let Shakuntala Devi accompany them on the trip.

The worried mother then alerted some relatives who went to the district hospital, but they couldn't find Neha there.

The teenager's body was found hanging from the bridge over the Gandak river which which flows through the region, the following morning.

Following a complaint, police have arrested four people, including Neha's grandparents, an uncle, and the auto driver who took them to the "hospital" trip. They are being probed for murder and the police are looking for at least seven other remaining suspects.

Shakuntala Devi said that Neha wanted to be a police officer, but lamented that her dreams "would never be realised now."

She alleged that her in-laws had always put pressure on Neha to stop her studies in a local school, and often chided the teenager for wearing anything other than traditional Indian clothing.

Women and girls in small towns in rural India are often subjected to cruel rules by the village heads of family patriarchs, in regards to what they wear, where they go, and even who they talk to.

Such cruelty indeed. A teenager's life snuffed out too soon, due to mindset which belongs in the 19th century.


Source& Photo source: BBC