Six convicted for 'honor killing' in India

Fri, 26 Mar 2010

New Delhi - In a landmark judgment, an Indian court has convicted six people for the 2007 "honor killing" of a newly-wed couple who defied local kinship traditions, news reports said Friday.

A court in the northern Indian state of Haryana found six men guilty on Thursday of murdering Manoj, 23, and his bride Babli, 19, of Karoran village in Kaithal district, the Asian Age newspaper reported.

The couple had defied local caste and kinship traditions of the rural Jat community that forbid men and women of the same sub-caste from marrying as they are regarded as siblings.

The girl's family had complained to the Jat khap panchayat or caste council after Manoj and Babli wed.

The council had pronounced the marriage illegal and ordered a boycott of the groom's family. The council also announced that villagers who kept ties with the family would be fined 25,000 rupees (about 550 dollars).

On June 15, 2007, as Manoj and Babli were trying to leave the area, a group of men led by Babli's brothers and cousins dragged the them out of a bus, took them to a remote location and hacked them to death before dumping the bodies in an irrigation canal.

Those convicted Thursday included five members of Babli's family and a leader of the caste council who had been publicly celebrated after the incident for protecting the honor of the Jat community.

While pronouncing them guilty, judge Vani Gopal Sharma said there was no place for a parallel system of justice in the country.

Jagmati Sangwan, president of the Haryana unit of the All India Democratic Women's Association, said, "We hope the guilty would be awarded strict punishment so that a signal is sent to those self-styled panchayat (council) leaders who have been taking the law into their own hands."

There have been several cases in recent years where young men and women have been ostracized or even killed for marrying against the wishes of the tradition-bound rural Jat communities.

A 21-year-old youth was lynched by a mob in a village in Jind district of Haryana in July 2009 after his marriage to a girl of the same clan was declared illegal by the caste council.

There is no composite data available on the number of such incidents in the past.

The government is considering an amendment to the Indian Penal Code to define "honor killing" as a heinous crime with punishment ranging from life imprisonment to the death sentence.

Home Minister P Chidambaram said in parliament in 2009 that the government was considering "a fresh definition" for such killings.

"Caste panchayats aid and abet honor killings. Principal actors in such panchayats need to be arrayed as accused and prosecuted for murder," Chidambaram said.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/315930,six-convicted-for-honour-killing-in-india.html.