Abolish the caste system now

Court rulings that do not find killings on caste lines an exceptional crime inviting the extreme penalty amount to further subjugation of victims from the lower strata of society, especially since India has a whopping 170 million Dalits.

By any stretch of imagination and fair play such rulings are not fit to remain alive in the case law as the accused would use them as a mitigating circumstance to avoid the capital punishment.

This discussion is related to an exceptional Supreme Court (SC) ruling of December 10 commuting to life the death sentence of four convicts of a disgraceful “honour” homicide.
The homicide was orchestrated and executed by a man and his friends to avenge the marriage of his sister to a “low caste” Keralite in Mumbai.

The trial court and the Bombay high court rightly did not show leniency to the so-called upper caste killers migrated from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and ordered death. Things, however, changed in SC.

“If he (the brother) became a victim of his wrong but genuine caste considerations, it would not justify death,” ruled the SC bench of justices S Sirpurkar and Deepak Verma.
A few days ago, another bench of SC justices Dalveer Bhandari and AK Patnaik had reversed the acquittal of six persons in a caste-related crime.

The judges held that “unfortunately, the centuries-old Indian caste system still takes its toll. This case unfolds the worst kind of atrocities committed by the so-called upper castes (Kshatriya or Thakur) against the so-called lower castes in a civilised country”.

They said it’s absolutely imperative to abolish the caste system as expeditiously as possible for smooth functioning of the rule of law and democracy in our country.
These rulings must be viewed against the backdrop of the national scene. The National Crime Bureau showed two years ago that UP topped the list of atrocities against SCs and STs, with 2,113 cases of the 9,819 cases nationally. The data also indicated a 10.2% increase in crimes against the two oppressed communities at the national level.

It’s also reported that cases relating to crimes against the deprived and oppressed section of society, ‘Dalit’, do not reach courts. If they do, the most likely outcome is acquittal. Official data reveals that between 1999 and 2001, 89% of trials involving offences against Dalits resulted in acquittals.