CRIME IN THE NAME OF “HONOUR”

In India the Big ‘C’ stands not so much for Cancer as for CRIME. As the country is growing, Crime rate is also increasing in the country. One of the heinous Crime that I have seen prevailing in India still is crime in the name of Honour i.e. HONOUR KILLING.. Honour killing is a heinous crime where a family kills his family member for bringing shame to the family. Generally it is practiced when a girl of a family desires to marry by her own choice , or marries a boy of another caste . Therefore, this is the only crime where your enemies don’t hurt you ,the murders are themselves the one who loved you with pure heart i.e. your own family. Honour killings can be found mostly in the villages of Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and even Bihar. In India we can see more than 1000 Honour killings per year.  

  

Though the world is getting modernized, but the thinking of people in Rural areas is still the same. They believe that it is against the Honour of the family. This tradition was horribly seen during the partition years when family killed women for their honour.what kind of Honour is this, when a  family themselves kill their family member? There is a misconception in people’s mind that it is practiced only in rural areas but actually there are many cases of Honour killing that happened in metropolis areas. One of the major cases in India is Manoj- Babli’s Honour killing case which took place in June 2007 where the killing was ordered by khap panchayat, which is custom based council among the jaats. The Head of khap panchayat was received a life time sentence for the orders he gave . where after, supreme court ordered ban of these khap panchayats.Honour killing prevails not just in India but in many parts of the world such as Europe, Canada, Pakistan etc. Honour killings are rare to  in South India, and the western Indian states of Maharashtra and Gujarat. There have been no honor killings in West Bengal in over 100 years, due to the influence and activism of social reformists like Vivekananda, Ramakrishna, Vidyasagar and Raja Ram Mohan Roy. Due to increasing number of Honour killings in 2010, Supreme Court issued notice to central government to take some action against this social evil.

Therefore the onus lies on the shoulders of youth to raise their voice against this social evil. There is need to change mentality of people i.e. to ask parents to accept their child’s happiness because it is they who have to lead their life.