The Backwardness and Savagery of Tribal India

IN an Indian village in the shadow of the Taj Mahal - the monument to one man's love for a woman - the scene, even by the standards of "honour killings", was one of unprecedented savagery.

First the young couple - Gudiya, 18, a pretty orphan girl, and Mahesh, 20, a slightly handicapped man - were beaten by members of their own family.

Then they were strung up by their necks with coarse rope and lynched from a tree.

The pair were cut down, decapitated and their bodies hacked into small pieces, which were carried triumphantly by the mob to a drain 2km away, before being doused in petrol and incinerated.

The crime for which the young lovers were sentenced to death by the village council: they were distant cousins who fell in love. .

continued: News.com.au