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WHY MEN ARE HANGED
in which the family lived. Police enquiry led to the disclosure of the fact that, in the night precedng the discovery of the child's body, a young widowed daughter of the family had died of fever". Finally, the story turned out to be that it was a case of abortion, the mother as well as the child having died in the process. Except the sick daughter, the mother was alone present in the house that night. So, she was arrested. The son was accused of complicity or connivance, on the strength of the fact that the day before the death of his sister he had called in a doctor to treat her for fever. The doctor had found the girl lying all covered up in a feverish condition. He also was suspected of connivance, indeed of assisting at the abortion, if not directly on the spot, at least through the administration of some suitable drug; but the case could not be brought home to him.
Whoever might have been involved in the tragedy, and whatever might have been the relative gravity of the parts played by them respectively, the salient facts of the case are these: A young widow belonging to a respectable family, despite the purdah in which she lived, had clandestine sex intercourse, if not a love affair. The result was pregnancy. She kept her state a secret as long as possible. Eventually, the mother came to know about the misfortune that had overtaken the family thanks to automatically observed social customs. What was to be done about it? The good name
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