A startling crime cloaked in caste contours, unresolved questions

One loved sewing patterns into slivers of cotton. Another liked hanging around the kitchen, learning to identify vegetables from the aroma wafting from the stove. One spent hours etching byzantine outlines of henna on her palms, hoping to master a craft she adored as a child. Another silently ticked off days in her mind before her family could afford that new salwar suit her heart was set on. Together, they both dared breach that invisible film that preserves the public sphere for men, and binds women to the mud-slapped walls of the courtyard. They went to the temple, the tailor’s, for evening walks and morning strolls. One was 18, another 15. Was.