Shafiq Ur Rahman Khan

In a case of attempted honour killing, a man shot at his niece who was riding on a motorcycle with her lover near Hindon Air Force station here Tuesday, police said. Jyoti, a 23-year-old government school teacher in Delhi, was travelling on a motorcycle with her lover Deepak from the national capital to Dadri. As they reached near the Hindon Air Force station, the girl's uncle Pramod Sharma came on a motorcycle, dragged a pistol from his pocket, fired a shot at his niece and fled from the spot. The bullet hit the girl on her right shoulder. Deepak rushed her to a local hospital where her condition was stated to be critical due to blood loss, the attending doctor said. Deepak lodged a complaint with the police in which he said that he was going to Dadri along with Jyoti as they were asked to reach their native place to sort out the dispute. 'He was in love with Jyoti for the last four years. Their conservative family members were creating problems for them and her uncle attempte

It was a national debate on a news channel. Tempers were running high, so were the decibels. The subject was explosive - Haryana's khaps and their diktats. In the midst of this charged atmosphere, a voice rose above the rest, silencing them all. Seema, a law graduate and resident of Karora village , made an allegation that changed the course of the debate. Her brother had been executed for marrying a woman from the same gotra, but that was not what Seema wanted to talk about on the primetime show. It was another shameful reality of Haryana villages she wanted to expose - incest. "Khaps should look into their homes before passing fatwas on lovers and crying hoarse about honour. Incest is rampant in the state and virtually every home is affected. Where is the honour anyway ?" she screamed. Early this week, the state was shocked when a pregnant girl was strangled by her parents and her body dumped on the outskirts of Bahadurgarh in Jhajjar district. Her crime: she was repo

Arguing that the IPC has provisions to deal with murder, Haryana is likely to oppose a proposed law to tackle honour killings. Haryana CM Bhupinder Singh Hooda on Monday discussed the matter with top officials and legal experts prior to his scheduled meeting with Union home minister P Chidambaram on Wednesday. Legal experts of the government say that anybody involved in honour killing can be booked under section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. Likewise, the planning or conspiracy of honour killing can be covered under sections 120B (criminal conspiracy) and 34 (acts done by several persons in furtherance of common intention) of the Indian Penal Code. These experts further disagree with the Centre's proposal in which an honour killing accused must prove his innocence in court. At present, the onus of proving the involvement of an accused lies with the prosecution. The proposed law could be misused by police because its provisions allow a large number of people to be book

JAIPUR: In a suspected case of honour killing,' a 30-year-old man was stabbed to death at Jobnaer in Jaipur district on Saturday morning. The victim, Rameshwar Chaudhary, had married a girl, Prema, of a different caste at Arya Samaj in June. The couple belongs to a village in Nagaur and has been living at Jobnaer in hiding over the past couple of months. The father and two brothers of the girl have been arrested by the police for the murder. According to the police, the boy belongs to Jat community while the girl is from Balai caste. Rameshwar used to work as a teacher in a private school and his wife too was associated with teaching activities. "On Saturday morning, Prema's father Kaisarmal and her brothers Lala Ram and Narendra reached their house and assaulted Rameshwar with knives after a heated discussion," said SHO Jobner police station, Rajkumar Sharma. Rameshwar sustained severe wounds on throat and died on the spot. All the three accused were

In yet another suspected case of honour killing, a man shot dead his daughter and her lover on Thursday at Chandpurana village in this Punjab district, police said. According to the police, the deceased were identified as Lovepreet Kaur, 17, and Harjinder Singh, 22. “According to the preliminary investigation has been revealed that Lovepreet and Harjinder were seeing each other for the last many months. At around 1 am Thursday, Harjinder went to Lovepreet's house to meet her,” Partap Singh, a police officer, told IANS. “Lovepreet's father could not control his anger on seeing Harjinder inside his daughter's room and fired at both of them. On hearing the gunshots, Harjinder's brother, who was waiting outside, came to intervene. He also sustained bullet injury in the thigh and is admitted in a hospital,” he added. Singh said it could be a case of honour killing but it was too early to confirm as investigations were still going on. Meanwhile, the police are raiding various

Prompt action by Haryana Police has saved a minor girl of Sirsa from being sold for Rs.50,000. The Police has arrested four persons in this connection. The case have been registered against all the accused under section 366A/120 B of Indian Penal Code on the complaint of 12 year old victim Palo, daughter of Lal Singh and resident of Jiwan Nagar, Sirsa. While stating this here Monday, a spokesman of the Police Department said that the arrested persons have been identified as Surjit Singh, a resident of Bhadolawali, Hira Singh, resident of Jiwan Nagar, Pooja, a resident of Jivan Nagar and Manju, a resident of JJ Colony. However, the main accused of the incident Lakha Singh,28, son of Richpal Singh, resident of Hamjapur, district Fatehabad succeeded in running away from the spot. He said that during interrogation, it was revealed that Palo was to be sold to Lakha Singh for Rs.50,000. The accused Surjit Singh and Hira Singh are uncle and maternal uncle of the girl respectively. Pooja

The Sarv Jaatiye Sarv Khap Mahapanchayat has warned the Haryana government and the Centre of intensified protests if a law banning same-gotra marriage was not formulated soon. It has also threatened to call a bandh on November 21 if the state government failed to take adequate action in this regard by then. The announcements came at a meeting of the Mahapanchayat held on Sunday at the historic Meham Chaubisi Chabutara in which Jats not only from Haryana but also from neighbouring Rajasthan, Delhi and Uttar Pradesh took part. Mahapanchayat president Mewa Singh said: “We want the central and state governments to bring in an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act 1955 and ban marriages within the same gotra. We also want that the Centre should not introduce any legislation against honour killing. If both the governments do not respond to our demands, then the Jat Khaps will go ahead with their agitation plan.” Mewa Singh also said that a massive gathering of all the major khaps of north Indi

Rajni, 19, and Sanjeev, 24, are under police protection. Rajni's family has threatened to kill them both if they marry out of class. RICK WESTHEAD/TORONTO STAR The word gotra originally meant “cow-pen.” For many centuries, cows were the most valuable asset a person could possess, so it was natural that families became identified with the group of cows they owned. The Jats, for instance, are a caste made up of some 33 million people in Indian and Pakistan. But within the jat community itself, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of gotras , or clans. “With someone's gotra, it's not something that can be proven or documented, that lineage back to someone who lived so many generations ago,” said Tulsi Patel, a sociologist at Delhi University who has studied the caste system. “It's more a general belief that you belong to the same clan.” A bride belongs to her father's gotra before her marriage, and to her husband's gotra afterwards. Boys keep the same gotra thro

Brutal killings by persons claiming to uphold the honour should be looked into by the Supreme Court The gruesome manifestation of a patriarchic social order's “total intolerance” towards girls in their family marrying a life-partner of their choice and the resultant torture/ elimination of the boy or even the couples as seen in Northern States like Haryana, has crossed the Vindhyas, albeit in new manner.Sociologists and social activists in Tamil Nadu are now wrestling its reappearance in a chillingly different form, albeit in the name of “Jaati (caste)” or ‘Samoogam (community)”, as the shocking murder of a 24-year-old youth Sivakumar of Sivaganga district for daring to marry the girl he fell in love with, shows. Sivakumar, an auto-driver of K Pudukkulam village in the district had been wooing 19-year-old Mekala of a nearby village Kattikulam for a year. As the tragic tale goes, pieced together from the victim’s testimony and police FIR, the girl's father Vijayan was dead set