Eideard

A low-caste Dalit boy has been killed in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh for sharing a name with a man of a higher caste, police say. They said Neeraj Kumar’s father Ram Sumer had been asked to change the names of two sons as they were the same as those of Jawahar Chaudhary’s sons.

The body of Neeraj, 14, was found on 23 November in a field. Two friends of the Chaudhary family have been arrested. Mr Chaudhary denies the involvement of his family in the murder…

Dalits, formerly known as “untouchables”, are at the bottom of the Hindu caste system in India. Although caste discrimination is illegal, biases remain in many areas.

The latest incident took place in Radhaupur village in Basti district.

Both Ram Sumer and Jawahar Chaudhary have sons named Neeraj and Dheeraj and that has long been an issue between the two families, Sub-inspector Praveen Kumar said. Mr Chaudhary, who belongs to a higher caste, had given several warnings to Mr Sumer to change the names of his boys.

On 22 November, Neeraj left home after dinner to watch television at a friend’s house. His body was found the next day.

Police said he was strangled.

There is a great deal of this sort of backwardness threaded through the corruption that remains in the Indian democracy. In many ways, life in that young nation is not improving on the past. It’s criminal for a culture to retain bigotry on this level heading into the 21st Century – and pretending to have dealt with the question.

Cookware taken in evidence

Police have arrested a woman in Pakistan on suspicion of murdering her husband, chopping his body to pieces and boiling it in a bid to get rid of the evidence.

Zainab Bibi, 42, allegedly told authorities she killed her husband Ahmad Abbas because he tried to sexually assault her 17-year-old daughter from another marriage.

She told police she sedated her husband by mixing sleeping pills in his tea and strangled him with rope before dismembering him.

Police say they discovered her plot after neighbours complained about a bad smell coming from her home.

The alarm was raised by Bibi’s landlord, Behzad, who lives on the ground floor of the two-storey Green Town house. He was so upset by the bad cooking smells coming from upstairs that he went up to complain.

Police claim that he found Bibi at the stove, cooking a korma with flesh from her husband’s arm and leg – because she believed it was the only way to practically dispose of his body…

“It occurred to me that if I cooked the body in parts with spices and aromatic ingredients that would curb the stench.’

But she insisted she had no plans to eat the resulting dish, or to feed it to others, adding: ‘I had a plan to do away with the cooked stuff by throwing it in a gutter. I would say to people that it had spoiled…’

The rest of Mr Abbas’s body was found in an aluminium trunk on the premise.

You never know when you might need to add extra ingredients to balance out a recipe.

An explosive south Fulton County fire was apparently started last month by a man trying to burn his ex-girlfriend’s body…Sarone Bridges perished in the ensuing blaze, but not immediately after the blast that started the quick-burning fire, Fulton County Fire Chief Larry Few said.

“Based on how his body was positioned, I think (the) explosion took its toll on him,” Few said. “The concussion from the blast could have made him disoriented where he fell, and he received the thermal burns afterwards.”

Investigators from the Fulton County Medical Examiner’s Office said Bridges died of burns and smoke inhalation.

Bridges’ ex-girlfriend, Beverly Bland, 34, was strangled before the fire, police said…

Few said Bridges, 35, doused a sleeping bag with gasoline and laid Bland’s body on the bag to set it on fire. But his plan literally blew up in his face.

“When he threw that match, the vapors of gasoline are what ignited,” Few said. “There was an immediate fireball that blew the windows out…”

Sometimes you get what you deserve.

Her neck aching after a night of wrapping gifts on Christmas Eve, Dr. Michelle Ferrari-Gegerson used an electronic massager to relieve the pain.

What happened next is unclear, but Broward Sheriff’s Office detectives and the Medical Examiner suspect the electronic massager became ensnared with a necklace Ferrari-Gegerson was wearing, and strangled her…

Police are withholding the brand and other details of the electronic massager while the investigation continues…

Ferrari-Gegerson’s apparent accident is not the first incident where an electronic massager has reportedly strangled someone.

In December 2008, the Matoba Electric Manufacturing Company based in Saitama, Japan recalled an electronic foot massager after three reported cases in that country of women strangling themselves accidentally while using the machine as a neck massager.

In all the cases, the women removed a cloth cover from the Arubi Shape-Up roller, and the collar of their shirts ended up getting caught in the machine’s rollers.

Uh, OK.

The easiest massage for me – when my wife isn’t around – is trying to get the dog to walk on my back.