The chillingly brutal murder of a 26-year-old female schoolteacher on her school premises in Faridabad on August 3, Monday, has badly shaken whoever has watched the video caught on the private school’s CCTV camera and circulated on social media. The murder has raised so many questions, which we as a civil society and a nation would find hard to answer.
The victim, Sandhya Karhana, a frail-looking woman of about five feet two inches tall, was pulled out of a room at Saraswati Senior Secondary School in Sikrona, Faridabad, and stabbed with a sharp-edged knife in the front yard by Amit, 21, described by police as her stalker. The school’s principal saw the attack and even tried to stop it but was chased away by Amit, who brandished the knife at him.
Sandhya, a resident of Firozpur Kalan, taught Class 2 at the school. A mother of two young children, she had reached the school in the morning, at about 7:30 am, on August 3. She was teaching a class when Amit arrived at about 9:35 am and attacked her without a pinch of mercy minutes later.
Amit, who sells milk and has studied only up to class 10, had arrived there with his face covered with a white cloth. He waited there with patience till he could know Sandhya was in a classroom nearby and pulled her out as soon as he saw her. He grabbed her and started stabbing her immediately, hitting her abdomen, neck and chest with the sharp knife.
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A helpless Sandhya could be heard giving out heart-wrenching cries, but she could offer hardly any resistance. Amit is said to have stabbed her 34 times within about 40 seconds, and she lay dead in a pool of blood almost the next minute. Amit then quietly left the premises. He was arrested within two hours, his clothes bearing stains of Sandhya’s blood.
“The accused and the victim knew each other for about two years. The deceased woman used to work as a teacher in Amit’s village. Amit had been persistently stalking her, and she wanted to get away from him; she had even threatened to report him to police. He committed the crime after she issued this threat,” said Assistant Commissioner of Police, Crime, Faridabad, Aman Yadav, at a news conference.
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The big question arising from a larger social angle is how a young, semi-literate milk vendor sees a woman teacher as an easy target and one who can even be stabbed to death with impunity. It was certainly Amit’s injured ego—because Sandhya asked her to stop stalking and threatened to report him to police—that prompted him to end her life. It mattered little to Amit that she was a teacher, a profession that builds character in young children, and was the mother of two young children. Perception of women by men as vulnerable creatures and easy targets is a notion that strikes as pitiably anachronistic today, but this brutal murder proves it is prevalent.
From the legal angle of safety requirements, the private school apparently had no security guards at the gate. The killer entered the school premises without being frisked. Having CCTV cameras installed helped identify the killer but not prevent the murder.
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The third important question arising is about Sandhya’s previous complaints to police about Amit’s stalking habits. While it is alleged that police took no action, ACP Aman Yadav said he would inquire if such complaints were received. If police acted on complaints by people, a lot of major crimes could be averted.
While other related questions will abound, the one about choosing who to be friendly with becomes prominent. Since Sandhya knew the milk vendor, she should have taken note of his level of education and acted more cautiously, even though it is no guarantee against violence.
