Blood against blood: The rising horror of familial crime

New Delhi, Mar 1 (PTI) A son shoots his father after an argument and proceeds to dismember his body. A man allegedly slit the throats of his pregnant wife and three daughters, aged three, four and five. A spurned lover walks up to a woman, dressed up for a new beginning, and shoots her at point blank range at her wedding.

This is not noir fiction. It is news, just days old.

Familial crime has a distinct kind of horror. It turns emotional connect into a weapon, cautioning that homes can also be the place where the threat is. The brutality here lies not only in the act of killing but also in the betrayal it represents: blood turning against blood, emotional attachments leading to more viciousness.

"All human beings possess an inherent capacity for aggression. However, most regulate violent impulses through moral frameworks, empathy, trust and secure attachments developed over time," child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr Kavita Arora told PTI.

Sometimes this framework shatters, leading to extreme violence that shakes society to its core with its brutality and begs the collective question – Why? "Intimate relationships are meant to be protective spaces built on safety and belonging; violence within them signals a breakdown of these regulatory systems," Arora explained.

Acts of violence within relationships in the country is not new. A single Google search throws up grim reminders from the past.

The 1995 'tandoor murder', where former Youth Congress member Sushil Sharma shot dead his wife Nalini Sahni over suspicion of an extramarital affair, and later tried to dispose of her body in a tandoor remains etched in public memory.

The stories come in a relentless torrent. The last fortnight is a case in point.

In Delhi’s Samaypur Badli locality, a woman and her three minor daughters were found with their throats slit last week. The main suspect, her husband -- a vegetable vendor who had been missing since the incident -- was arrested on Saturday from Rajasthan's Kishangarh.

Just before that, in Lucknow, a 21-year-old on February 20 allegedly shot his father after a quarrel, cut the body into pieces and hid the torso in a drum. And in Bihar’s Buxar, videos of a bride slumping to the ground as a jilted suitor pumped a bullet into her sent chills down the spine.

The disturbing headlines splattered on newspapers, mental health experts underscore, are more than about individual crimes. They point to simmering anger, fragile egos, unmet emotional needs, and fractures within intimate relationships -- pressures that, when combined with poor coping mechanisms, can turn destructive.

What fuels such brutal acts -- deep resentment, patriarchal entitlement, an inability to handle rejection and shame, or all of it? Clinical psychologist Shweta Sharma points to toxic relationship beliefs -- viewing a partner as property (narcissism), shifting blame (paranoia), or justifying violence (antisocial traits) -- along with certain personality traits, past trauma, childhood exposure to violence, and insecure attachment styles.

"In such cases, violence becomes a distorted attempt to regain psychological control. These acts usually don’t happen suddenly because someone is ‘purely evil’. They are more often the result of growing emotional instability, fixed and unhealthy beliefs, and a strong feeling that their control, status, or identity is being threatened," she explained.

While men statistically account for a greater share of lethal intimate violence, a series of crimes last year told another story. Brutality is not confined to one gender.

The cases involving women committing heinous familial crime surfaced with unsettling frequency last year.

In June 2025, Sonam Raghuvanshi allegedly plotted her husband Raja Raghuvanshi’s murder during their honeymoon in Meghalaya. His decomposed body was later found in a gorge in Sohra.

In March, Muskan Rastogi and her lover Sahil Shukla allegedly stabbed her husband Saurabh Rajput to death in Meerut, dismembered him, and sealed the remains in a cement-filled drum.

In April, Bijnor's Shivani initially claimed her husband Deepak died of a heart attack; police later alleged she had strangled him. That same month in Bhiwani, YouTuber Ravina allegedly killed her husband with a male friend after he objected to their “intimacy” and her social media activity.

In June, Sangli resident Radhika allegedly killed her husband Anil just 15 days into their marriage. In October, a 28-year-old man in south Delhi suffered severe burns when his wife allegedly poured boiling oil and chilli powder on him as he slept.

"While gender patterns may exist statistically, it is overly simplistic to attribute such crimes solely to being male. Extreme violence is more accurately linked to maladaptive personality traits, unresolved trauma, emotional dysregulation, and distorted beliefs about relationships," Sharma said.

"Reducing the issue to a single gender risks ignoring the deeper psychological and social dynamics that drive such behaviour," she added.

The urgent question, and the one that needs immediate attention, is not why it happens but how it can be stopped before it reaches the point of no return.

According to Arora, warning signs often surface early.

Escalating aggression, extreme jealousy, possessiveness, emotional withdrawal, and poor anger regulation are red flags that should not be ignored.

Intervention, she argues, must also include teaching emotional regulation and empathy at home and in schools, the refusal to normalise control or humiliation within relationships, and expand access to mental healthcare, conflict-resolution resources and community-based counselling.

"Ultimately, prevention depends on addressing loneliness, relational breakdown, and social conditioning -- not only reacting after tragedy, but strengthening the social and emotional ecosystems that regulate human aggression in the first place," she said. PTI MG MG MIN MG