A 17-year-old girl from Chhattisgarh’s Koriya district was repeatedly raped and forcibly given abortion pills by community leaders because she married a man from another caste. The survivor belongs to the Gond community from the Khadgawan station area. The alleged perpetrators were leaders from her community and relatives who abducted her and then gang raped her. The survivor was five months pregnant at the time.
In a country where caste is so pervasive, crimes cannot be viewed in isolation. It is essential to analyse each case of brutality through the lens of ‘honour’ and prejudice. In this case, the survivor ‘dared’ to go beyond the accepted practice of endogamy and was ‘punished’ for it by her community.
While this is by no means the first case of honour-based violence, it nonetheless calls for an intersectional inquiry into honour-based sexual violence and the legal lacuna that the country faces.
The Chhattisgarh case
The incident took place in early July when the survivor’s parents and members of her community tracked down her location and visited her at her in-laws’ house. The survivor stated in her complaint to the police that she was handed over to two community leaders by her family members. The two men, Ramesh Tekam and his brother-in-law, Daroga Singh, then abducted her. They took her to their house in Surajpur district, where they confined her for a few days in an empty grocery store and repeatedly raped her. When they discovered that the survivor was five months pregnant, they forcibly made her consume abortifacient medication and even massaged her stomach in an attempt to forcibly abort the foetus.
It was when the survivor herself was sent to a medical store to procure more such medication that she managed to contact her husband. The police rescued her from confinement and arrested the duo under the Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, and the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023. The accused were apprehended while in hiding and remanded to judicial custody.
The community’s leaders took it upon themselves to ‘right a wrong’ that they considered a crime. It is reported that when the girl went missing a few months earlier, her family lodged a missing persons complaint but withdrew it after learning of her intercaste marriage. Even as the families had accepted the marriage, it remained unacceptable to the community leaders, who allegedly convinced the survivor’s parents to pursue her, locate her, and hand her over to them because she deserved to be taught a ‘lesson’.
Anathema to justice
In India, khap panchayats (caste councils) are known to act as kangaroo courts, illegally penalising individuals for violating conservative social norms. While this case is still being probed to determine whether there is a connection to khap panchayats, these self-styled councils have long been involved in financial extortion, public humiliation, and social ostracisation of individuals and families to ‘punish’ those who dare to transgress patriarchal and caste norms.
In fact, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) took cognisance of media reports alleging that khap panchayats in Haryana had issued orders in matters relating to marriages within the same caste (in several Indian communities, marriages do not take place within the same subcaste). In one case, a man was asked to divorce his wife because they belonged to the same subcaste. When the woman’s family rejected the panchayat’s diktat, they were asked to leave the village. In another case, a man faced the panchayat’s wrath after he eloped with a woman from his own subcaste and married her. Despite a court order allowing the couple to cohabit, he was lynched by villagers in the presence of the police.
In 2022, a woman from Patha Veerapuram Dalitwada returned to her village following her intercaste marriage, which had been consented to by the elders of both families. However, village elders gathered at her home to institute an impromptu panchayat and passed a resolution ordering her family to pay INR 25,000, undertake development work at the local temple, or host a mass feast for the entire village as ‘penance’ for the violation of community norms. When she refused, a mob assaulted her, leading to her hospitalisation. The local police filed a criminal case against the mob.
The role of the police in these cases has often been limited to that of bystanders or documentarians. On the other hand, courts have also taken years to pronounce judgements in such cases of honour-based violence. The most glaring example of this is the Manoj-Babli case of 2007. Manoj and Babli eloped and married each other despite belonging to the same gotra (clan), a practice prohibited by local customs. The following month, the woman’s relatives dragged the couple out of a Karnal-bound bus, and the newlyweds were murdered. Of the seven accused, five were given death sentences; all of them were relatives of Babli. The khap panchayat leader Ganga Ram was given a life sentence, while the driver, who was held guilty of kidnapping, was sentenced to seven years in jail. The court also ordered action to be taken against two policemen for laxity.
The right to choose
In Lata Singh v. State of Uttar Pradesh, the Supreme Court of India held, ‘Once a person becomes a major, he or she can marry whosoever he/she likes‘, and that any threats or violence by parents or the community against a consensual intercaste or interfaith marriage are wholly illegal. Honour killing was held to be an ‘outrage on humanity’, and police personnel were directed to protect couples from harassment.
This laid the foundation for Shakti Vahini v. Union of India, where the Supreme Court ruled that any attempt by khap panchayats to interfere with a marriage between consenting adults is illegal. Arising from a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by the NGO Shakti Vahini, a three-judge bench led by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra declared the right to choose a life partner as a fundamental right under Articles 19 and 21. The court observed that honour killings stem from a feudal perception of honour incompatible with the constitutional regime, holding that the consent of families or khap panchayats is not required for marriages and that the State must protect this right. The court also held that khap panchayats are illegal assemblies.
In the case of Asha Ranjan v. State of Bihar, the Supreme Court held that the choice of a woman’s partner is a legitimate constitutional right under Article 19 and that a group of persons, in the name of ‘class honour’, cannot curtail such a right. In effect, the freedoms of association and privacy were read together to be interpreted as an individual’s autonomy to select a spouse of their own choice.
Waiting on inaction
While the courts have acted, the legislature must criminalise khap panchayats and their diktats. However, data remains scarce; the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) only began tracking honour-based violence in 2014, logging 18 cases. As per answers provided by the government in Parliament, 25 such cases were recorded in 2020, 33 in 2021, and 18 in 2022. The Home Ministry noted 145 incidents in 2022.
Without specific legislation, offenders face general charges like kidnapping, intimidation, conspiracy, abetment, attempted murder, and murder, stripping away the casteist intent behind such crimes. The Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, covers cases where victims are Dalit or Adivasi, but omits any explicit mention of honour-based violence.
Love is not a crime. Until India legally recognises honour-based violence as a distinct crime, the right to choose a life partner remains a hollow and often fatal promise.
About the author(s)
Second year student of Media Studies at CHRIST (Deemed to be University), BRC, Bangalore. A trained Kathak dancer, theatre artist and political nerd.
