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The Honour Killing Of Surjit Kaur Athwal
Beautiful Surjit Kaur Athwal attended a wedding and never returned. A lovely soul taken away by the evil practices of honour killings. What kind of a crime did she commit,that the family could not forgive but perceived her death as the only means?.
Surjit Athwal was a British Indian woman born on 17 July 1971 in Coventry, England. At the age of 16, she was compelled to marry a man ten years her senior, Sukhdave Singh Athwal, the son of 70-year-old Bachan Kaur Athwal, who her daughter-in-law later described as the matriarch of the family and very autocratic.
She barely knew the man she had married as she only met him once before the wedding. Being a new member of the family, Surjit tried by all means to adjust but struggled with some of the rules. She described them as too harsh and unreasonable compared to where she was coming from. Faced with this dilemma, she made an effort to discuss the challenges with her husband and mother-in-law, but her plea fell on deaf ears.
Left with no other choice in changing the course of things, Surjit was forced to rebel. This didn’t go well with her husband, who felt she was forcefully challenging his authority as the man of the house -which is a taboo in their Sikh tradition- and her mother-in-law was also outraged by her actions. It marked the beginning of the reign of terror for Surjit…
