An inter-caste marriage ends in the husband being hacked to death and the girl being the prime witness against her own parents

Love can be the most wonderful thing in the world, when it ends in bliss. I mean, we grow up on a diet of books, and fairy tales and movies about happily-ever-afters. How can then one not fall in love? Maybe just with the idea of love.

And what is the biggest hurdle in marrying the person you love? Often, parents. But we watch movies that tell us, love is beyond all these things. But what happens when all your romantic ideas ends in your husband being hacked to death in broad daylight, leaving you scarred both mentally and physically?

The body of Sankar. Source The News Minute.

While you try to recover from this abrupt turn of words, let me tell you about Kausalya and Sankar, a couple who married against Kausalya's parents' wish. It could have been a typical Bollywood fairytale about parents eventually accepting the marriage. But real life can be so different from films.

Kausaly and Sankar are not just two names, they represent two castes-Dalit and Thevar (OBC) in Tamil Nadu. Kausalya's parents and other members of the Thevar caste are socially and financially extremely powerful in Udumalaipettai, the same place where Sankar was hacked to death by three killers hired by Kausalya's family.

Sankar's father braeks down after hearing the news of his son's murder. Source The News Minute.

They had been married for eight months.

The day was 13th March, 2016. Kausalya was just 20-a feisty girl who had eloped to marry the love of her life.

CCTV footage of the caste killing, showed three men on a motorbike attacking the couple. Sankar and Kausalya had been out, shopping. Sankar could not be saved, while Kausalya managed to live, and became the prime witness to her husband's murder. The murder's judgement came out on 12th December, 2017. Principal District and Sessions Judge Alamelu Natarajan held eight of the 11 accused guilty and awarded death sentences to six of them including Chinnasamy (Kausalya's father and prime accused); life sentence to one accused and a five-year imprisonment term to another accused. She acquitted Annalakshmi (Kausalya's mother), P. Pandidurai ( Kausalya's uncle) and the 10th accused V. Prasanna Kumar (19) stating the prosecution had failed to prove their involvement in the crime beyond reasonable doubt.

Kausalya's parents after the judgement. Source The News Minute.

Beyond reasonable doubt- it's quite a term. Kausalya narrates how it was her mother who had made explicit threats of killing her own daughter if she 'dared' to marry a Dalit man. But Kausalya, as Sankar's childhood friends fondly remember, was too much in love to care.She wanted to marry the person she had chosen and despite repeated threats from her own family, she called up Sankar one day and said she wanted to marry him.

And that was it.

Kausalya was the brave one, knew what she wanted and what she didn't-Sankar was to be her husband and partner for life, and not the grooms her parents were trying to find for her.

Kausalya is as determined as she was back then. It takes courage to turn on your family. We do it easily with friends and acquaintances and strangers. But how do you point at your parents and say that yes, they murdered my husband?

We are taught that the family, especially parents, can do wrong. But they do. They can betray us in the worst way possible.Kausalya wants her mother to be punished too. In fact, she wants everyone to get death penalty. She doesn't want another Sankar-Kausalya love story to end up as photos with garlands on them.

Kausalya in recent times, fighting a legal battle for death penalty to Sankar's murderers.Source The News Minute..

Kausalya had walked out of her home yo marry Sankar, worked at a tiles factory after iving up her studies and had celebrated his first job and her first salary and had endless banter with his friends and Sankar during weekends. Everything ended with a few hacks of a sickle and some money paid by her family to kill Sankar.Sankar's friend says, "You know, we're young and looking for jobs and love. Caste is usually the last thing on our minds." (The News Minute)

Kausalya's bravery scared everyone, but it insulted her parents the most. It still insults members of her community-they have been issuing threats after the judgement.

But Kausalya knows her mind, and even though she is scared, she wants everyone to get death penalty.