Five in Haryana get death penalty for honour killings (Second Lead)

KARNAL - Five people were awarded the death penalty by a court in this Haryana town Tuesday for the honour killings of a young couple who had married in 2007 against the wishes of their community. The judge said the unlawful decisions of the khap panchayats have to be stopped.

The couple, Manoj, 23, and Babli, 19, had eloped and married in 2007. Manoj ran an electronics repair shop at Kaithal, while Babli was a resident of Karoran village. They married in May 2007 and were murdered the following month.

Those sentenced to death included Babli’s brother Suresh, Rajinder and Baru Ram (both uncles), and Gurdev and Satish (both cousins).

‘Khap panchayat’ or the community’s kangaroo court leader Ganga Raj, who was also convicted last week for murder along with the other five, was given life imprisonment.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Vani Gopal Sharma convicted six people here last week for the murder of the couple in June 2007.

Mandeep Singh, a driver, who was convicted last week for abducting the couple, has been given seven years in jail.

Holding the khap panchayat decision as unconstitutional, the judge said: “The khaps have become a law unto themselves. They have ridiculed the constitution.”

The convicted had conspired to kill the couple after a khap panchayat declared their marriage as void. Ganga Raj, a small time political leader and Babli’s relative, was part of the ‘khap’ decision declaring their marriage void and saying that they were brother and sister.

Babli’s relatives chased the couple for days. In June 2007, they dragged the newly-weds out of a Karnal-bound bus and brutally murdered them and dumped their bodies into an irrigation canal.

The court judgment will give a strong legal message to Haryana’s Khap panchayats which have become notorious in recent years for handing down unlawful decisions, especially against young couples from the same community or sub-caste getting married. The judge held that these decisions were “contrary to the constitution”.

The court also ordered each of the convicts to pay a compensation of Rs.100,000 to the next of kin of the victims’ families.