Flight Risk

Rights Groups Say The Number Of People Being Lured Overseas To Be Murdered In So-Called Honor Killings Is Rising.

- Mirren Gidda

EARLIER, Seeta’s brother-in-law, Jitendra Saini, had called her father and explained that she had died of a heart attack while staying at his family’s home in Kurukshetra, northern India, with her husband and four children. In keeping with Hindu custom, Jitendra said, his family would cremate her.

Seeta’s father pleaded with Jitendra. “Do not cremate her,” he told him. “We want to see her for the last time.” His plea wasn’t motivated only by grief— he was suspicious. His daughter’s husband, Pawan Saini, an Indian citizen and British resident whom he had introduced to Seeta, had been physically abusive for years, her family says. Twice, in London, in 2010 and 2013, Seeta’s sisters had seen him throttling his wife. Her family also says Pawan repeatedly demanded that she let their eldest son move to India to live as something of a surrogate son to Jitendra and his wife, who did not have children of their own. Had Pawan taken Seeta, a British citizen, to India so that he could kill her in a country where the judicial system is riddled with corruption?

In London, in the hours after they heard the news, Seeta’s family hurried to book flights to New Delhi. As they packed their bags, her father, a retired grocery store clerk, dispatched his nephew in Mathura, India, to make the five-hour drive to Kurukshetra. The family wouldn’t arrive until April 1, 2015, a full day later. Someone had to guard his daughter’s body.