Elderly Indian couple from lowest caste hacked to death over 22-cent outstanding grocery debt.

Elderly Indian couple from lowest caste hacked to death over 22-cent outstanding grocery debt. (ET).

NEW DELHI: An axe-wielding shopkeeper hacked a couple to death in northern India on Thursday after they failed to pay a debt of 22 US cents, police said.

The middle-aged couple from the lowest Dalit caste in Uttar Pradesh state were on their way to work early on Thursday when the grocery store owner asked them to pay their 15-rupee (22-cent) debt.

“The shopkeeper demanded money but they pleaded to be able to pay it later. He became enraged and attacked them with an axe,” Arun Kumar, the investigating officer in Mainpuri district, told AFP.

The officer said the couple had bought goods from the shop last week with a promise to pay the 60-year-old owner within a few days. “Their refusal to pay made him angry and he killed them,” Kumar said.

The owner was arrested soon after the incident and the murder weapon recovered, the officer said. Hundreds of people are murdered in India each year over sudden provocations, often trivialities.

In 2014, almost 15 per cent of the murders in New Delhi were unmotivated, according to police, and were mostly committed by non-criminals acting in a fit of rage.

More than 33,000 people were murdered in India in 2014, according to latest figures released by national criminal records bureau.

“Son of Garbage Collector Cannot Become a Judge”: Egypt’s Justice Minister....Because he's a Christian?

“The Son of a Garbage Collector Cannot Become a Judge”: Egypt’s Justice Minister....Because he's a Coptic Christian? (ES).

Egypt’s Minister of Justice Mahfouz Saber has stirred controversy across Egypt after declaring that children of garbage collectors cannot become judges as they must grow up in a “respectable” environment.

During a live television interview, the Minister of Justice answered a question regarding the Justice Ministry’s employment criteria.

“With all due respect to the garbage collector, and anyone else beneath him or above him, it is necessary for the environmental medium where a judge grows to be suitable,”said the Justice Minister.

“A judge has his highness and position, he must come from a respectable medium, both financially and morally.”

The Minister added that if a garbage collector would be hired as a judge, he would suffer from depression and other issues. The Minister, who said this statement is based on prior experience, did not clarify what ‘issues’ he was referring to.

Asked whether this means the garbage collector and his children are deprived of employment, the Minister said the they would find a job that is suited to them.

Following the statements, Egyptians have taken to social media to call for the resignation of the Justice Minister. On Twitter, the top trending hashtag in Egypt calls for the Minister to be replaced.

Meanwhile, following the statements, Egypt’s former vice President Mohammed El-Baradei criticized what he called was a lack of the “concept of justice.”

“When the concept of justice is absent from a nation, nothing remains,” said El-Baradei, who has been living abroad since he resigned in 2013 over the bloody dispersal of pro-Morsi sit-ins in August 2013.

El-Baradei added that the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights preserves “the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.” 

In solidarity with garbage collectors, social media users have posted their support and praise of garbage collectors’ crucial role in society. Hmmmm.....the garbage collectors a.k.a. Zabbaleen in Egypt are mainly Coptic Christians, in good 'tradition' of Islamist supremacy, we can't have Christian judges....Do we? 'Muslim Brotherhood' Anyone?