Catholics shocked after female student beheaded by boyfriend

RANCHI, India – Students at a Jesuit school in Ranchi were in deep shock after an engineering student beheaded his girlfriend.

“I have never seen such a gruesome incident in my life. It appears to be vengeance killing over spurned love,” said Jesuit Father Nicholas Tete, principal of St. Xavier’s College, in the capital of Jharkhand state.

The girl was a student of Rammanohar Lohia College, but had gone to St. Xavier’s April 27 for an exam, the priest told the Asian church news agency UCA News April 28. She was attacked as she left the second-floor exam hall after the three-hour test.

“I rushed out of my office and saw the assassin running. He tried to escape but the college students nabbed him,” Father Tete said.

The attack with a kukri, the traditional weapon used by the Gurkhas, was so brutal that the girl’s head fell a foot away from the body, police said.

Father Tete said the college administration has sought police protection.

Police Chief Sambhu Thakur told reporters that the girl, Khushbu Kumari, was killed by Bijendra Kumar, an engineering student from Jamshedpur, another town in the state.

Although the council had made the college an examination center, it did not provide any security.

The assailant later told the police that he had been in love with Kumari for the past five years and that the two had decided to marry. He decided to kill her and himself when he heard that her parents were planning her marriage to someone else after the exam.

Kumari’s father told reporters that he usually took the girl to and from the exam center.

“Yesterday I had some work,” he said.