Honour killing: Between life and love (Times of India)
“Police protection hardly helps, say activists. Standard operating procedure in the case of a runaway man and woman ends up with the woman’s family filing a case of kidnapping and/or rape against the man or his family. The woman shows up as ‘missing’ in Haryana police’s records. From November 2009 to May 2010, of the 686 people filed as ‘missing’ on Haryana police’s website, a largish 30% are females aged between 15 and 28 years.
“Police hunt the couple down. If the girl is under 18, she is forcibly returned to her family. If her age is suspect, and she refuses her family, she is packed off to a nari niketan and the guy is jailed. This usually takes place in the month between a couple’s registering their wish to marry and the registration, which has mandatory month in-between: a provision begging to be altered. ‘Fear of cases filed under section 363 (kidnapping) and 366 (compelling/inducing woman into marriage) against the “husband” drives the couple to court. If registration is immediate, such cases can’t proceed,’ says advocate Kulbir Singh Dhaliwal. Jaipur-based activist Kavita Srivastava moots the idea of same-day registration. ‘The more time you give, more the problems for the couple,’ she says. Many couples also surface to protect their families. In the headline-grabbing Manoj-Babli murder, for instance, the posed picture of the two garlanding each other was taken for Babli to prove that she married Manoj of her own accord. This was the only way to ensure that the kidnapping case against her mother-in-law Chandrapati, of Karora village in Kaithal, could be quashed. It was on that visit that the two were murdered.
“As is clear, not every couple is killed. Activists say barely a handful are murdered: what determines the fate of the target is the couple’s financial independence, political clout or wherewithal to pay off the khap. Lawyers say 90% cases are ‘solved.’‘Nobody says a word when a politician’s children decide to marry against norms. It’s very selective,’ says Aidwa’s Sudha Sundararaman. Or when couples can pay the “fines” khaps impose, in short paying their way out. Matters come to a head if the woman marries a lower caste guy. Her succession rights can mean property going—via the girl—into a lower-caste family. Inter-caste, intra-village, intra-gotra are the big daddies frowned upon. But again, selective. ‘A khap had declared a couple brother-sister recently and nullified their marriage. We intervened and as the boy was Delhi-based and had clout, their khap revoked the decision,’ says Sundararaman.”
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