Five in Haryana to die for ‘honour killings’ (Third Lead)

KARNAL - A court Tuesday sentenced to death five men who dragged out a young couple from a crowded bus and murdered them three years ago for daring to marry against the wishes of their community in rural Haryana.

Additional District and Sessions Judge Vani Gopal Sharma also came down heavily on the traditional caste-based ‘khap panchayats’, one of which had come out against the May 2007 marriage of Manoj, 23, and Babli, 19.

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

‘Khap panchayat’ leader Ganga Raj, who too was convicted last week for murder along with the five, was given life imprisonment. Mandeep Singh, a driver accused of abducting the couple, got seven years in jail.

Manoj, who ran an electronics repair shop at Kaithal town, and Babli of Karoran village married in May 2007 after falling in love. Her family was opposed to the marriage saying they shared a ‘gotra’, or belonged to the same sub-caste, and so should be deemed to be brother and sister.

After a ‘khap’ panchayat declared their marriage as void, the convicted men conspired to kill the couple.

Babli’s relatives chased the couple for days. In June 2007, just a month after the marriage, they dragged the newly-weds out of a Karnal-bound bus. They were murdered and the bodies dumped in an irrigation canal.

The judge declared that the unlawful decisions of the ‘khap panchayats’ had to be stopped. “The khaps have become a law unto themselves. They have ridiculed the (Indian) constitution.”

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

The dead man’s family welcomed the ruling, but one of them said they would have been happy had the guilty men been hanged.

Lal Bahadur, the prosecution lawyer, hailed the verdict. “This is a historic judgement,” he said. “It is a message to the society and to ‘khap panchayats’.”

Lawyer Harish Salve said in New Delhi: “The judge has seen the enormity of the crime. It is a big step in the right direction.”