Debating the Death Sentence for \'Honor\' Killings

By NIHARIKA MANDHANA

Five people from Delhi were sentenced to death on Friday for the “honor killing” of a couple, the latest in a series of death penalty judgments in India for the murder of young people who wish to marry outside their caste or religious group.

The victims, who belonged to different castes and hoped to get married, were reportedly tied with ropes and beaten with sticks and pipes before being electrocuted to death in 2010.

“Such cruel and barbaric acts cannot be allowed to take place in developed metropolitan cities,” the sessions judge, Ramesh Kumar Singhal, said while sentencing.

So-called honor killings take place in many parts of India, particularly in the northern states of Haryana, Bihar, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, where caste continues to be a decisive factor in marriage. Young men and women who violate the traditional rules that prohibit marriage outside their own ca stes and religious communities are regularly ostracized, tortured and sometimes even murdered by members of their family, village or community. On some occasions, self-appointed caste councils, called khap panchayats, pass diktats ordering such attacks, claiming they hope to protect the honor of their communities.

In recent years, India's highest court has taken a strong position against this practice. “There is nothing honorable in such killings,” the Supreme Court said in 2006, “and in fact they are nothing but barbaric and shameful acts of murder committed by brutal, feudal minded persons who deserve harsh punishment.”

Last year, the court went one step further and prescribed the death sentence to punish those guilty of honor killings, saying it was time to “stamp out these barbaric, feudal practices which are a slur on our nation.”

“All persons who are planning to perpetrate honor killings should know that the gallows await them,” the c ourt said.

But not all institutions in India agree with the court's stance. In a report released in August this year, India's Law Commission, an advisory body of legal experts, criticized the court's directive, saying that the death sentence in India is to be used “only in very exceptional and rare cases,” when “aggravating and mitigating circumstances” are found.

The commission found that since the decision was given, the lower courts of Uttar Pradesh and Delhi had sentenced almost all accused in cases of honor killings to death. Disapproving of this trend, the commission said that each case needed to be judged on its own facts and circumstances and criticized what it called the Supreme Court's “blanket direction” to give the death penalty in all instances of honor killings.

“No hard and fast rule can be laid down,” the report said, in sharp contrast to the court's decision prescribing the death penalty for honor killings committed “for w hatever reason.”

In the 2011 case decided by the Supreme Court, a man strangled his daughter to death for having a relationship against his will. The court said that if a person is unhappy with the behavior of a relative or a member of his caste, “the maximum he can do is to cut off social relations,” but he “cannot take the law into his own hands by committing violence or giving threats of violence.”

India has retained the death penalty, but since the 1980s this extreme form of punishment has been used only in the “rarest of rare” cases. Statistics show that even where the death penalty is given, execution is uncommon. According to Amnesty International's recent data, 435 people were sentenced to death in India between 2007 and 2011, but none have been hanged.

Honor killings, which have been under intense media scrutiny, now fall within the “rarest of rare” category. In a bid to combat the practice more effectively, the government began c onsidering various legal proposals in 2009, including an amendment to the country's penal code to explicitly mention honor killings. The Law Commission, tasked with evaluating this proposal, advised against it, saying the amendment would cause “interpretational difficulties.”

Instead, the Law Commission proposed a law to ban the now infamous “khap panchayats,” which are different from the country's gram panchayats, or local self-governments. The bodies of community elders have been called “undemocratic” by the government, and the report labels them a “pernicious practice.” “Often young couples who fall in love have to seek shelter in the police lines or protection homes to avoid the wrath of kangaroo courts,” the report said.

The proposed law seeks to prohibit any group from gathering “to deliberate on, or condemn” any legal marriage, “on the basis that the marriage has dishonored the caste or community tradition or brought disrepute to the family, village or locality.”

The intention of the law, the report said, is to “curb the social evil of caste councils or panchayats” that endanger the “life and liberty of young persons.”