Hindu-Muslim Couple Commit Suicide To Save Their Families From 'Trouble'

Kanwardeep Singh| TNN |
Representative image
SHAHJAHANPUR: For more than four months, Feroz Ahmed, 19, and Gunjha Sharma, 18, of Badagaon village in Powayan near here had been in a relationship. Over this time, they had come under increasing pressure from their respective families, who objected to the fact that they were from different religions.
.According to their family members, the young couple had started feeling that, given the situation in the state, their relationship was going to bring trouble to their families. On Tuesday morning, near the railway station at Bantara here, in front of shocked eyewitnesses, the teenagers hugged each other, after which Feroz shot Gunjha in the head and then killed himself with a pistol.
In the immediate aftermath of the couple’s death, the first reaction of the police was to suspect that it was a case of honour killing, because of the religions of the boy and the girl. However, eyewitnesses informed the police how the teenagers hugged each other before Feroz shot Gunjha dead and then turned the pistol on himself.
According to eyewitnesses, the teenagers first hugged each other, and then Ahmed shot Sharma in the head. Then he turned the pistol on himself.
“It happened before we could even believe what was going on. The couple was standing near the railway station, and then they hugged, and then we heard the gunshots,” said Mohan Singh, a local resident who happened to be passing by at the exact moment when the incident happened.
Police informed the family members of both the boy and the girl about the incident. However, neither set of parents was willing to come and take the bodies away after the postmortem, officials said.