Crime data highlights this worrying trend. In Karimnagar district, dowry-related deaths and murders of women increased sharply from seven cases in 2024 to 15 in 2025, while other murder cases remained unchanged at 15 each year: Reports
KARIMNAGAR: From courtrooms to cremation grounds, family disputes in Telangana are increasingly ending in bloodshed, exposing an alarming erosion of trust, restraint and human values inside homes.
What begins as silence and unresolved anger soon turns destructive. Many couples enter marriage with hope, only to find themselves trapped in disputes over dowry and domestic pressures.
When families and elders can no longer intervene, and police mediation fails, these conflicts end up in courts, draining relationships of emotion and trust.
Crime data highlights this worrying trend. In Karimnagar district, dowry-related deaths and murders of women increased sharply from seven cases in 2024 to 15 in 2025, while other murder cases remained unchanged at 15 each year.
In Warangal, dowry-related deaths and murders fell from 10 cases in 2024 to four in 2025, but the total number of murders remained high, with 36 cases reported in 2025, compared to 15 in Karimnagar.
Several recent cases reveal the violence behind these statistics. In Mallapur of Jagtial district, a long-running domestic dispute ended in a brutal murder. During an argument over money, a woman allegedly killed her husband and later walked into a police station to surrender with the weapon.
In Rajanna Sircilla district, a man who had returned from Dubai was allegedly strangled to death by his wife and another man after he discovered her relationship. The crime came to light only when suspicious marks were noticed on his body during funeral preparations.
In Jayashankar Bhupalpally district, a marital dispute took a disturbing turn when a man allegedly killed his second wife, shared a video of the act on social media, and later died by suicide.
Violence has also involved parents and in-laws. In Karimnagar’s Saidapur, a 16-year-old girl was allegedly killed by her parents in an honour killing. In Mahbubabad, a woman was allegedly strangled to death by her husband, brother-in-law and parents-in-law, leaving two young children orphaned.
Sibling rivalry and blackmail have also ended in bloodshed. In Jagtial district, two sisters allegedly murdered a man who was blackmailing them with private videos. In another incident, a long-standing dispute between brothers in Talladharmaram turned fatal during a midnight argument linked to local elections.
These incidents underline how momentary rage, addiction, infidelity, honour-related fears and domestic pressure are pushing individuals toward extreme violence and self-destruction, revealing a deep-seated crisis in modern family relationships.
Assistant commissioner of police, Karimnagar, G. Vijay Kumar told Deccan Chronicle that people often lose fear of the law when consumed by momentary anger. He noted that the decline of the joint family system, where elders once mediated disputes, has removed an important safety net.
Nuclear families, he said, often function in emotional isolation, allowing unchecked conflicts to escalate into crimes.
Registrar of Kakatiya University and head of its psychology department, Prof. U. Ramchander, observed that when traditional family socialisation fails to equip individuals with conflict-resolution skills, they may resort to criminal behaviour. Exposure to violent content on social media, he said, can normalise extreme responses to frustration or perceived loss of honour.
He stressed the need for empathy-based education, early emotional training, and structured pre-marital counselling to prevent domestic conflicts from turning deadly.
