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.
