In an appalling incident of honour killing, a 54-year-old man killed his own daughter on Thursday after she insisted on marrying a Muslim man.

The accused, identified as Gopal Nakum, works as a labourer in the Rajkot city in Gujarat. He hit his 20-year-old daughter Ila in the head with a club until she bled to her death after she expressed her desire to marry a Muslim man. The incident happened on Thursday at 8 am at their residence in Shah Nagar-4 in Gandhigram. "The father asked the daughter to have her morning tea. But she refused to have it, telling his father that she would not drink even a glass of water until she is allowed to marry the boy she had an affair with. In a fit of rage, the father hit the girl in head with a club two-three times which led to fatality," a policy official from Rajkot reportedly told a news agency.

When Ila fell unconscious, their neighbour dialed the emergency number and rushed her to a hospital, where she succumbed to her injuries that afternoon. The 20-year-old girl had apparently eloped with the 19-year-old boy but as the two of them were not of marriageable age, they were convinced by their parents to return home the same day. "On June 18 this year, Ila’s mother had died of a heart attack. On Thursday morning, when Ila started sulking, demanding that she be married with the boy, the father reminded her of her mother’s death just around a month ago and that they had still not recovered from that loss. But the daughter persisted, enraging the father," the police further added.