One Family's Fight for Justice in Alleged Honor Killing

Swinder Singh was asleep at her home in north London when she got the call. In the blurry hours of the early morning, she listened as the voice on the end of the phone told her that her younger sister Seeta Kaur, 33, was dead. Seeta’s twin sister, Geeta, delivered the news.

Earlier, Seeta’s brother-in-law, Jitendra Saini, had called her father and explained that Seeta 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.

When the family eventually arrived in Kurukshetra, dusk was