Law to deal with honour killings likely

Home minister P Chidambaram said the government could consider a law to specifically deal with ‘honour killings’ since there is no provision in the Indian Penal Code and Criminal Procedure Code.

He added that caste panchayats which had no legal recognition to pronounce judgements in these cases should be considered accomplices and be punished.
Chidambaram said in the Rajya Sabha that honour killings were a “matter of shame” for India. He was replying to a calling attention motion on honour killings moved by Brinda Karat of the Communist Party of India (Marxist).

Speaking strongly in favour of weeding out the crime, Chidambaram said, “We should hang our heads in shame” over such incidents taking place in the country in the 21st century. “The vilest crimes are committed in the name of defending the honour of the family or women,” he said.

He said he “recoiled with shame” on reading in newspapers that two teenagers — a Dalit boy and a Muslim girl — were killed in a village near Meerut in Uttar Pradesh in the name of honour.

Chidambaram said he had similar feelings when he read that a young man, accompanied by a warrant officer, was killed when he was on his way to fetch his wife from a village in Jind in Haryana, or when he read that a newly-married couple in Delhi feared for their lives after a fatwa was issued by a panchayat in Jhajjar district in Haryana.

“The government is deeply concerned about violence against women and recognises that real progress can only be made by addressing causes that are rooted in anachronistic attitudes and false values,” he said.