HOMICIDE BY AN ASIAN - CULTURAL-FACTORS

There is a significant population of Asians from the Indian subcontine nt living in the United Kingdom. The majority of them immigrated in th e early 1950s. They brought with them their customs and traditional va lues which they have continued to practice. Suicide and parasuicide pa tterns in Asians from the Indian subcontinent in the UK have been stud ied by Burke (1976); Merrill and Owens (1986); Raleigh et al. (1990); and Raleigh and Balarajan (1992). There have been no descriptions of h omicide in immigrants from the Indian subcontinent (India, Pakistan, B angla Desh and Sri Lanka) living in the UK. If the cultural determinan ts for both suicide and homicide are similar the high suicide rate in young Indian women could be artificially inflated because some of the suicides by burning could be disguised homicides.