BHIWANI/CHANDIGARH: Even as rural Haryana remains in the stranglehold

of the defiant caste panchayats, honour killings continue in their most horrible
form: On Sunday, the family members of a girl allegedly killed her and her
teenaged lover and hanged them as exhibits in their house for the village to
see their "fate." 

According to police, Monika (18) and her lover Rinku (19), both from Jat

families, were brutally killed for honour at Nimriwali village, near Bhiwani. The
father of the girl, her brother, uncle and cousins are suspected to be behind
the crime and are absconding. 

"We've registered a case of murder and wrongful confinement on the basis of

a complaint by Rinku's uncle, Krishan Kumar. Police teams have been
deputed to arrest the suspects named in the case. We are waiting for the
post-mortem report. However, circumstances clearly suggest it to be
an honour killing," said inspector Prem Singh, the investigating officer. Singh
avoided enquiries as to who had informed the police and who first came to
know about the incident. 

According to preliminary investigations, the injury marks on the bodies of

Monika and Rinku suggest that they were tortured by their killers. 

Sources said Monika was a dropout and Rinku, who belonged to the
neighbouring Manherhu village, was living with his maternal uncle, a trader.
The two had been going around for over two years despite objections from
their families. According to sources, the two were caught by their relatives at
Monika's uncle's house.
The Kaithal honour killing case is an honour killing of newly married Manoj Banwala and Babli in June 2007 after a khap panchayat (caste-based council

among Jats) in their Karora village in Kaithal district, Haryana, passed a decree prohibiting marriage against societal norms. Both belonged to the Banwala gotra, a

Jat community. Hence, they were declared brother and sister, though not directly related, and their marriage was declared invalid and incestuous. When the

couple refused to abide by the ruling and got married, they were abducted and killed by the bride's relatives.[1][2]

After the verdict of the khap panchayat, the state government raised no concern.[3] These self-styled caste-based councils, common in the interior areas of several

Indian states likeHarayana, western Uttar Pradesh and parts of Rajasthan, and have been allegedly functioning with political blessings for years now.[1] Though

after the killings, according to Home Minister P. Chidambaram, the UPA-led central government is to propose an amendment to the Indian Penal Code to make

honour killings a "distinct offense".[4][5]

In March 2010, a Karnal district court ordered the execution of the five perpetrators in this case, the first time a court in Haryana has ordered justice be served in

an honour killing case. The court gave life sentence to the khap head who ordered the killings but did not participate, while the driver in the kidnapping was

sentenced to seven years.

In yet another case of 'honour killing' in the capital, a class IV government employee and his lover were
murdered allegedly by the woman's husband and cousins, her brother and one of her paramours.

The incident was reported from south Delhi's [ Images ] Sarojini Nagar and the victims have been identified
as Uttam Kumar and Anju. Six persons, including Anju's husband Karambir, were arrested in this regard.

The arrested have been identified as Anju's alleged paramour Navin Kumar (24), Jagphool (23), Shokeen
(24), Manoj (27) and Rishi Das (21), her brother.

"The murders were at the hands of close family members. It is a case of honour killing," a senior police
official said. Anju and Uttam Kumar belonged to different castes.

The incident came to light following investigations into a complaint filed Kumar's brother Keshav on June
27 that the former was missing since June 19. Kumar was working at Electricity Division of CPWD in
Safdarjung Hospital. 

During investigation, it came to light that Kumar last went to the area of Bharthal. It also came to light that
he was in love with one Anju, who had eloped with him earlier.

Investigators found that Karambir murdered Anju allegedly on June 22. Karambir had admitted to killing
his wife, police said.
A senior police official said it also came to light that Anju was simultaneously having a relationship with
one Naveen Kumar who is her neighbour and working as a driver with a bank manager in Dwarka.

"She was in contact with him for the last few months and on June 19 night, she was speaking to him over
phone. Naveen was interrogated and he spilled the beans," the official said.

Naveen told police that he alongwith Karambir and his brothers Deepak, Manoj and Shokeen and one of
the brothers-in-law Rishi were involved in the killings, the official claimed.

On June 19 night, Karambir had gone to attend the birthday party of Rishi at Ayurvigyan Nagar in AIIMS.  

"Anju was having frequent talks with Naveen without letting him know that she had already invited Uttam
Kumar to her house. After the conversation, Naveen had taken his meal and went out for a stroll in the
lane and found that a motorcycle was parked outside her house," the official said. 

He called Anju but her mobile phone was switched off. He knocked the door on which Anju peeped from
inside the room but did not open it.

"Naveen got angry and called Karambir's brother Manoj who then informed Karambir and his cousins
Shokeen and Jagphool. Rishi also reached the spot. They all barged into the house and caught hold of
the deceased and started thrashing him," the official said.

They then allegedly forced Uttam Kumar into a car. He tried to resist but was overpowered by the
accused. 

"When they reached the toll bridge in Manesar, Uttam Kumar raised an alarm, on which the accused
raised the volume of the stereo and once they crossed the toll bridge, they strangled him. After driving
some distance from Manesar, they threw the dead body into a 100 feet deep well on Sabi River bridge in
Dharuhera of Rewari district," the official said.
In a suspected case of honour killing, a youth was found dead at Jalalabad town in the district following which two persons have been arrested, including girl's brother.

30-year-old Mohd Sabir was found murdered with his throat slit yesterday.

It is suspected that Sabir was killed by his girlfriend's brother Asas Mohd and his associate Imran, deputy superintendent of police SP Rajesh Kumar said.

The girl's family was against their alliance and had threatened the couple with dire consequences.

Both Asas and Imran have been taken into custody, he said, adding investigations were on in the case.

Meanwhile, a couple Sunit (23) and Anita (22), who got married against their families wish, has sought police protection after they were threatened with dire consequences by their parents here
yesterday.

The couple has been provided security as they feared they may be killed, the police said.

Rani Rohini Raman, a JNU researcher working on honour killings, writes on the significance of a recent verdict of a Haryana district court, awarding death sentence to those

guilty of killing a young couple - Manoj and Babli.

The recent verdict given by the additional sessions judge of Karnal district, Haryana on Manoj
and Babli honour killing case is a milestone in the fight against patriarchal and feudal khap
panchayats. The khap panchayats have come vociferously against the verdict and
recentlyorganised a maha khap in Uttar Pradesh to show their might. News of more honor
killings are also pouring in. The following is a brief attempt to identify the different forces
behind the political clout of the khaps in light of the issue of honor killings.

Manoj and Babli, married couple and residents of  Kaithal in Haryana, were killed in June 2007
after they married on the basis of their own choice and ran away from their village. They were
blamed of breaking the village exogamy and gotra rule imposed by the khap panchayats.
According to this rule the boy and girl of same village and same gotra could not marry as they
were part of a "brother and sister" relationship. When Manoj and Babli eloped and married, a
false complaint against Manoj was lodged that he had kidnapped Babli. When the couple was
hiding, police used to come to Manoj’s house in search of them regularly and used to abuse
Manoj’s widowed mother and his two young sisters. Because of this Manoj and Babli had to
come out in public and had to appear in front of the district magistrate to whom Babli explained
that she had married Manoj out of her own will. After this, the magistrate had ordered proper
police protection for the couple. Yet when they were returning home, their bus was stopped and
they were abducted and later killed. Their bodies were thrown into a canal. 
For three weeks now, a morbid murder story has been playing out in the Indian media. Nirupama Pathak, 22, a New Delhi–based journalist, was allegedly murdered by her own mother. Her
crime? She had wanted to marry a fellow journalist who belongs to a lower caste — and she was pregnant. On a trip home to make a final effort to convince her family, Nirupama texted her
boyfriend that she was being held captive, locked up in a bathroom. On April 29, she was found dead. The family claimed Nirupama had killed herself, and lodged a case against her boyfriend
for rape and abetting suicide. But when the postmortem results revealed Nirupama had been asphyxiated, the police arrested her mother, Sudha Pathak.
The case is now headed to court, which will disentangle the web of allegations and counterallegations. Meanwhile, it has thrust the issue of honor killings to the center of public debate. Though
Western readers associate the term more with Taliban-ruled Afghanistan than with 21st century India, honor killings are shockingly frequent in villages in the northern and northwestern parts of
the country, where those daring to cross the barriers of caste are made to pay with their lives. Mostly, these cases are confined to the inside pages of newspapers, but the Nirupama case — in
urban, educated, middle-class India — has hit the front pages.(See the tempestuous Nehru dynasty of India.)
Activists say dozens of people, both women and men, are killed for "honor" every year, falling victim to the deeply entrenched caste system, which dictates an individual's social standing based
on the caste they are born into. The majority of these killings take place in the agrarian states of Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan, where land ownership and caste go hand in
hand and an honor culture thrives by maintaining caste and gender hierarchies. "The upper castes fiercely guard their hold over land and power in the community," says Ranbir Singh, a
Haryana-based sociologist currently a consultant with the Haryana Institute of Rural Development. "They are able to mobilize young, educated but unemployed, mostly unmarried men, who are
all fired up to shore up their self-esteem."(From TIME's archives: India and the politics of prejudice.)
Perceived caste transgressions are severely punished. In a recent case in a Haryana village, an 18-year-old Dalit girl and her father were allegedly burned alive by upper-caste Jat men
following an argument over a dog. Women, since they have property rights, are a threat if not kept under a vicelike grip. It is no surprise that Haryana, one of India's wealthiest states with a
largely farm-based economy, has the highest rate of selectively aborting female fetuses, a practice that has skewed the demographics so much that there are only 861 women for 1,000 men.
Young men are forced to purchase brides from other states. The statistics on honor killings are also the worst there: groups called khaps run kangaroo courts that routinely issue fatwa-like
orders for the execution of those who have offended caste boundaries.
The situation is aggravated by modernity, as more and more young people want to marry for love instead of family or caste considerations. Khaps violently oppose both marriages between
upper-caste women and lower-caste men and those within sub-castes and villages deemed to share kinship ties. The khap itself, long a locus of power for the land-owning Jat community, is
being rendered irrelevant by economic change, increasingly egalitarian democratic politics and population movement — hence, say observes, this brutal attempt to re-establish its prerogatives.
"Due to their declining status, they are trying to assert their existence by taking the law in their own hands," explains Prem Chowdhry, senior academic fellow at the New Delhi–based Indian
Council of Historical Research.
A month before Nirupama's death, a court in Haryana sentenced five people to death for killing a couple belonging to the same village and gotra, or caste-based clan (village elders had
deemed them brother and sister). Manoj Banwala, 23, and Babli, 19, of Karoran village in Haryana, had married against the wishes of the bride's family on April 7, 2007. Urged on by the khap,
the village had turned against Banwala's family, forcing the couple to flee to a nearby city, where they were killed two months later on order from the khap. A police investigation found that
police assigned to protect the couple had actually passed on information to the assailants. When the court pronounced the punishment, the khaps launched protests and demanded that the
government introduce changes in the Hindu marriage law to ban marriages within the same gotra.
Astonishingly, prominent politicians from both the ruling Congress party and the opposition have come out in support of the khaps' demand. With city and village elections due shortly, political
parties see this as an easy ploy to lure votes, caste being a handy instrument of statecraft. Even as the Nirupama case was burning, the government announced that caste data would be
collected as part of the census — the first time since 1931 — to get exact caste statistics, ostensibly to implement meaningful affirmative-action plans for underprivileged castes. But the move
has many opponents, who believe it will only perpetuate a political culture that takes advantage of caste divisions. "It is the cynicism of politicians that they've made caste a tool for political
mobilization," says New Delhi–based analyst Amulya Ganguli. "The khaps' growing clout and the killings of hapless couples show how dangerous this renewed emphasis can be."

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