A woman has been arrested near Mumbai, India, for allegedly murdering her pregnant, unmarried daughter who refused an abortion. The woman’s younger daughter allegedly assisted in the murder.
As reported by Hindustan Times and The Free Press Journal, investigations into the murder began when Mamta Dubey, 46, notified the police that her daughter Asmita, 20, had died after suffering severe stomach pain. The police ordered a post-mortem after noticing several suspicious marks on the body, including facial swelling and signs of injury. According to Hindustan Times, the autopsy revealed injuries to Asmita’s body and concluded that the marks on Asmita’s neck and body were strangulation marks.
Police then arrested Dubey, who confessed to murdering her daughter. Dubey told the police she had discovered that Asmita had become pregnant with her boyfriend, and she had demanded that Asmita, who was studying in college at the time, get an abortion. Asmita refused, and Dubey violently assaulted her daughter. Dubey’s 17-year-old daughter allegedly tied her sister’s legs during the assault, helping her mother commit the crime.
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Investigations into the case and the circumstances surrounding Asmita’s pregnancy are ongoing, and authorities are determining the legal procedure regarding the minor’s alleged involvement in the murder. According to Hindustan Times, “A case was registered under sections 103 (murder), 115 (voluntarily causing hurt to another person), and 351 (criminal intimidation)” of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023.”
It is unclear if the murder and violence charges will include a feticide charge for the murder of Asmita’s preborn baby.
Honor killings occur around the world, and overwhelmingly target women and girls, including pregnant mothers. According to a post published by Arizona State University’s Global Human Rights Hub fellows blog, “The limited and scarce data on honor killings shows that nearly 5,000 women and girls are annually killed for honor worldwide and almost one-third of them are from India and Pakistan.” The post notes that “honor killings occur among women from different ages, religion, social status or location.”
Live Action News regularly reports on murder cases involving pregnant women and their preborn children. In most cases, the women and babies are victimized by the women’s boyfriends or husbands. In the United States, criminals guilty of the double deaths of a mother and her preborn baby often face double charges for the murders, though not every state recognizes the homicide of a preborn child as a crime.
