A blow to kangaroo courts

The New Indian Express
First Published : 01 Apr 2010 11:32:00 PM IST
Last Updated : 01 Apr 2010 12:08:30 AM IST

The significance of the verdict in the ‘honour killing’ of a young married couple in Haryana’s Kaithal district lies in the fact that it is mainly an achievement of the court. In fact, the custodians of law and order did everything possible to subvert the case, forcing the Karnal Sessions judge to recommend summary action against six policemen. Credit should also go to Chanderpati, the widowed mother of Manoj, who was killed along with his wife Babli, for marrying within the ‘gotra’. It was the doughty mother who pursued the case to its logical end. When the couple got married in 2007, they approached the Punjab and Haryana High Court for police protection. The policemen who were to guard them looked the other way when the girl’s relatives pounced on them on their arrival in the area. They were killed and their bodies thrown into a canal. The police found it convenient to cremate the bodies by declaring them ‘unidentified’. It was Chanderpati who insisted on registering a case of murder against the accused. She is disappointed that the head of the khap panchayat who masterminded the murders was given a lighter life imprisonment.

Though the self-styled khap panchayats have no legal standing, they are able to get away with murder because those in power are scared of disciplining them. Their definitions of ‘gotra’ which traces familial relations to one person in the hoary past have no rational basis. Yet, they are strictly against any marriage within a ‘gotra’. Couples who fall in love and want to marry can afford to do so only at great peril. Such marriages are portrayed as bringing dishonour to the families concerned and the ‘gotra’ to which they belong. Umpteen have been the cases in which such couples either had to leave the area to live in distant places or had been done away with. Their verdicts have at times been as funny as asking a legally-wedded, co-habiting couple to separate and live as ‘brother and sister’. Political leaders seldom oppose the dictates of the khap panchayats for fear of losing the votes at their command. This, in turn, encourages them to take the law into their hands as at Kaithal. The verdict in the present case will, hopefully, drive the fear of the law into their minds. The Central government’s decision to draft a law that specifically deals with ‘honour killings’ will also help deal with errant khap panchayats.