http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India/Khap-compromise/articleshow/6150868.cms
Should honour killing be dealt as murder?
TOI Crest, Jul 10, 2010, 11.11am IST
Though north India acquired notoriety for the spate of honour killings
in recent weeks, the first major judicial response to this violent
conflict between modernity and feudalism came in Mumbai. The trigger
was the elopement in 2004 from a Mumbai chawl of a Brahmin girl from
Uttar Pradesh, Sushma Tiwari, with a low-caste Malayali neighbour. A
fast-track trial court imposed death sentence on Sushma's brother,
Dilip, and his two accomplices for killing her husband and three other
of her in-laws.
The judicial system however flattered to deceive. After the Bombay
high court confirmed the death sentence in Sushma's case, the Supreme
Court set the clock back. Last December, a bench headed by Justice V S
Sirpurkar reduced the capital punishment to life sentence. Reason:
Since Dilip became "the victim of his wrong but genuine caste
considerations, it would not justify the death sentence".
Conferring a measure of legitimacy on honour killings, the apex court
said: "It is a common experience that when the younger sister commits
something unusual and in this case it was an inter-caste,
intercommunity marriage out of (a) secret love affair, then in society
it is the elder brother who justifiably or otherwise is held
responsible for not stopping such (an) affair."
Thankfully, despite such a retrograde signal from the Supreme Court to
go easy on honour killings, a trial court in Haryana imposed exemplary
punishment in another case. Only that the provocation for this
instance of honour killings was not an intercaste marriage. Instead, a
khap panchayat, a caste collective assuming state powers, "annulled"
the marriage between Manoj and Babli on the grounds that they were
from within the same gotra (mythical patrilineal ancestor) and from
the same village.
On 30 March, trial judge Vani Gopal Sharma awarded death to five
persons: Babli's brother, two uncles and two cousins. Breaking new
ground, Sharma also gave a life sentence to khap panchayat chief Ganga
Raj, for conspiring with Babli's family. Without mincing any words,
the trial judge said, "The khaps have become a law unto themselves.
They have ridiculed the Constitution. These unlawful acts of khaps
should be stopped."
The Haryana government evidently did not share the trial court's
outrage. Far from cracking down on khap panchayats, the state gave a
respectful consideration to their brazen demand that the Hindu
personal law be amended to prohibit intra-gotra marriages. As if that
were not bad enough, it brushed aside the demand made by Manoj's
heroic mother Chanderpati that the police be held to account for
abandoning the runaway couple on that fateful day in 2007 despite a
protection order from the high court.
While Congress netas from Haryana visibly wilted under the pressure of
khap panchayats, their central leadership, much in the same spirit of
compromise, desisted from taking on those extra-constitutional
entities. The central government, on its part, staged a somersault on
whether there was a need for a special law to deal with honour
killings. Only a year ago, Home Minister P Chidambaram rejected the
populist demand in Parliament saying, "The answer is not to make
another law.
Whatever law we make, honour killing is murder. It would have to be
dealt with as murder and tried as murder." But the recent escalation
of honour killings by khap panchayats prompted Chidambaram to resort
to the time-tested ploy of enacting a new law as a substitute for
enforcing the existing law.
The home ministry has drafted a Bill containing a mixed bag of
amendments. The most significant proposal is to widen the definition
of murder to make khap-dictated honour killings a distinct offence so
that all those who participate in the decision are liable to attract
the death sentence. Other reported changes include the proposal to
remove the 30-day notice period for the solemnisation of civil
marriage in a bid to cut down legal hassles faced by runaway couples.
Given the alleged sensitivity of the draft Bill, and given the
differences within Congress, it seems unlikely that the government
would muster the courage to push it through in the upcoming monsoon
session of Parliament. It has already prepared the ground for
postponement by referring the draft Bill to a group of ministers and
seeking feedback from states.
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