Death for Love

8/9/2019 Death for Love

1/8

Death for love

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

in Sonepat and DelhiLack of governmental action to stop honor killingscomes up for criticism even as the crime continuesunabated.

SUSHIL KUMAR VERMA

The police removing the body of a girl fromWazirpur who was found dead in a car at Ashok

Vihar in New Delhi on June 22.

NOTHING, not even the death penalty awarded by aKarnal court to five people in the Manoj-Babli case onMarch 30 this year, seems to deter honor killings in India.In the past few months, there has been a spate ofmurders in the name of protecting family or communityhonor in areas adjoining the national capital region.


2/8

In the latest such incident, Sham Mohammad, 18, aMuslim, and his friend, Reena, 16, a Hindu, were founddead on the premises of a school in Samain village ofFatehabad district in Haryana on July 4. The boy had been

bludgeoned to death and one of his eyes was almostgouged out, while the girl had apparently been forced toconsume poison. The police arrested the girl's maternaluncles and a few others in connection with the case.

The youngsters had studied in the same school and whenthe families came to know of their friendship, the boy wassent away to Punjab and the girl discontinued her studies.

Sham had come to his native place for a vacation whenthe incident occurred.

Significantly, persistent interventions by organizationssuch as the All India Democratic Women's Association(AIDWA) have emboldened people to report cases ofhonor killings to the police. But governments have beenaccused of showing a lack of will in dealing with thesituation. Recently, the Supreme Court too voiced its

concern over the lack of governmental action to stophonor killings.

On June 21, taking cognizance of a public interest petitionfiled by the non-governmental organization Shakti Vahini,a Division Bench of the Supreme Court issued notice tothe Centre and eight State governments Haryana,Punjab, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Himachal

Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh seeking anaction plan. The NGO argued that while killing for honorwas an extreme reaction, victims were often subjected tolong-term, low-level physical abuse and bullying as apunishment for bringing dishonor on the family. Suchabuse included battery, torture, mutilation, rape, forced


3/8

marriage, and imprisonment within the home. Thesepremeditated crimes were intended to protect the familyhonor by preventing and punishing violations ofcommunity norms of behavior, especially sexual behavior

of women.

Many a time, the petition said, harassment and threatsdrove young couples to suicide. The law enforcementagencies, it said, were mute spectators, intervening onlyafter an incident had happened. They were caught in themidst of lack of political will to act against such feudalforces as these forces also represent vote banks, it said.

The petition demanded that the Supreme Court lay downa series of guidelines for law enforcement agencies todeal with such crimes on the pattern of the guidelines forcombating sexual harassment at the workplace. It alsopointed out how the States had failed to comply with thedirections issued by the court in 2006 ( Lata Singh vs.State of Uttar Pradesh and Another) to ensure that no oneharassed or threatened couples who married out of caste

or religion.

The court directed that the police should institute criminalproceedings against anyone who issued or carried outthreats of violence. There is nothing honorable in thesekillings and, in fact, they are nothing but barbaric andshameful acts of murder committed by brutal, feudal-minded persons who deserve harsh punishment, it said.

The petitioner contended that as a state party to theUnited Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Formsof Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), theGovernment of India was under obligation to see thatdiscrimination against women in matters relating to


4/8

family and marriage was eliminated. This includedensuring that informal decision-making bodies such askhap panchayat (caste councils) were restrained fromenforcing their dicta and interfering with the right of

women to choose their spouses, the petition said. Also, asa signatory to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights,India had an obligation to protect the lives, rights andliberty of individuals and protect them from such heinouscrimes, it said.

There has been a strident demand, especially after theCarnal court judgment, to amend the Hindu Marriage Act,

1955, in order to prevent same- gotra marriages. This hasbeen at the centre of the latest debate on honor killings.On June 19, the Delhi High Court dismissed a petitiondemanding a ban on same- gotra marriages. Castigatingthe petitioner for wasting the time of the court, the

judges demanded to know which Hindu text prescribedbanning of sagotra (same clan) marriages.

The petition in the High Court was filed soon after the

Supreme Court dismissed a similar one on the grounds of jurisdiction. Arguing that same- gotra marriages wereviolative of fundamental rights and against Hindutradition, the petitioner wanted the court to appoint acommission that would suggest amendments to theHindu Marriage Act in order to prohibit such marriages.

But not all honor killings in the recent past were

instigated by caste councils. For instance, on June 25, twocousins, aged 14 and 12, of Mohalla Kot in the old city ofSonepat district were battered and strangled allegedly bytheir own grandmother and paternal uncles. Their bodieswere thrown amidst hyacinths on the embankment of theWestern Yamuna Canal.


5/8

SANDEEP SAXENA

MEMBERS OF VARIOUS women's organizationsdemonstrating at India Gate in New Delhi against

honor killings, on June 30.

Mohalla Kot is a part of Sonepat that is cut off from thecity. Its narrow by lanes make access to it in any big four-wheel vehicle difficult. People here keep to themselvesand, not surprisingly, very few were willing to talk about

the murder of the two children. The grandmother and theuncles are reported to have said that they killed the girlsfor having an illicit liaison with their 16-year-oldstepbrother, who has been arrested and booked for rape.

There has not been much sympathy for the slain childreneither from the police or the larger society. Media reportshave constantly referred to the girls as having had an

affair with their cousin. Even the police viewed theincident as a normal outcome of a wrong that had beencommitted by the girls.

It is not a case of honor killing. It is a case of illicitrelations. The family has a history of its members beingarrested under the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic


6/8

Substances Act, K.K. Rao, Sonepat's Superintendent ofPolice, told Frontline. According to a section of the police,the girls were of age and not minors though the post-mortem and school records revealed otherwise. They had

been subjected to sexual intercourse as well. But whetherthe arrested minor boy is the real culprit or not is nowunder the scanner.

The circumstances in which the girls lived were pathetic,to say the least. The father of the 14-year-old girl was in

jail and the mother was living away from home. Theparents of the other girl, too, were living away from the

family. A relative of one of the slain girls said the childrenwere innocent.

The Wazirpur murders

The triple murders in Wazirpur, near Delhi, were equallyhorrific. The landed Gujjar and Jat communities in thevillage, an island in the midst of posh colonies in AshokVihar, became wealthy overnight, thanks to the real

estate boom. Shops here display the latest brands andswanky cars whizz past its roads. Most of the houses aremulti-storeyed. Young boys and girls dressed up in thelatest fashion move around with nonchalance.

The mentality of the residents of Wazirpur village ismediaeval despite all the modern amenities, said aresident. The boys here do nothing. They just roam

around. There is a lot of easy money as land prices havegone up tremendously.

The village has a chaupal (a place for panchayat andpublic meetings), used mostly by the men of thedominant castes, as in much of rural North India, where


7/8

the elders sit and smoke their hookahs. It was in thissetting that Kuldeep, a Rajput boy, and Monica, a Gujjar,decided to tie the knot four years ago. They were the firstcouple to have married out of caste in the 400-year-old

village.

On June 21, two of the girl's cousins, in their early 20s,killed them in the name of honor. The next day, anothergirl, a cousin of Monica, too, was found murdered. Theboys, who confessed to the crime, said they could notbear the taunts of the villagers after the girls hadsupposedly shamed them, one by marrying out of caste

and the other by aspiring to be a model.

Less than a week earlier, a girl and a boy belonging totwo different castes were electrocuted by the girl'sparents and maternal uncles in a colony in north-eastDelhi. These are not just stray incidents.

In nearby Haryana, on June 21, two teenagers were foundmurdered in a village in Bhiwani district. Six members of

the girl's family were arrested. The girl was a student ofClass XI. Six days later, a couple belonging to twodifferent castes in Dheera village killed themselves by

jumping in front of a train following resistance to theirrelationship.

In April this year, in Bhainswal village in Sonepat, a boystrangled his 16-year-old sister for having a relationship

with a boy of the same village. A day later, the girl'sfriend committed suicide. In October 2009, a Sonepatcouple, who married from the same gotra, had to face thecommunity's ire. The man was killed and his wife rapedafter being lured to a place in Delhi.


8/8

It is clear that the matter of honor killings cannot be dealtwith by law alone. There also has to be some form ofsocial reform plan on the agenda of political parties, inaddition to an attitudinal change in the people.

Significantly, such crimes are committed more often inStates that have skewed child sex ratios and a high rateof crime against women and children, and wheredistributive justice in both economic and social terms isvery low.

Documents

Death for Love