BY

DR SHAILA PARVEEN

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK

M.G.KASHI VIDYAPITH VARANASI

A 20-year-old tribal woman was allegedly gang-raped in a West Bengal village on the orders of a Salishi Sabha, the state’s equivalent of khappanchayats (feared for dispensing kangaroo court-style justice), the police said on Wednesday. Falling in love with a man from outside her community and then failing to cough up Rs. 50,000 fine imposed by the Salishi Sabha led to the woman being humiliated with the sexual assault

According to the woman, the salishi sabhasummoned her and her beloved on Monday and detained them through the day and night. After her family said they could not pay the fine, the salishi sabha allegedly ordered the mass rape t’s horrific.

They (rapists) are all our neighbours and I call some of them as kaka (uncle) and some others as dada (elder brother) or bhai(brother),” she added.

Those who defy diktats have to pay a heavy price. Take the case of Munirul Haque of Betla village in East Midnaporedistrict. A ‘shalishi adalat’ presided over by NizamuddinAlam, a local Trinamool Congress leader, asked Munirulto pay a fine of Rs 25,000 for allegedly making a pass at the daughter a trader in the village in September last year. Munirul, a poor farm labourer, said that he could not pay such a huge amount and pleaded for a waiver of the fine. Nizamuddin, a cousin of the trader, then decreed that in lieu of the fine, Munirul would have to give his 16-year-old daughter in marriage to a 46-year-old man who already had two wives. Munirul had to agree because he had no alternative.

Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh: A Khap Panchayat or caste council in Madhi village in Uttar Pradesh allegedly stripped a woman, blackened her face and beat her for helping young couple to elope. The woman's son who tried to intervene and protect his mother was also beaten up.

"They removed my clothes and beat me with a baton. They were drunk. Then four people called a panchayat where they blackened my face and misbehaved with me," says Bala Devi who told the police that the men also blackened her face.

Her son says the men were from the village Panchayatand did not care about beating him up too when he tried to protect his mother.

A khap panchayat of the Meena community near Rajasthan's Dausa district has ordered the abduction of Santara Meena, a 25-year-old teacher in a government-run school.

The woman's fault is that she refused to accept her marriage, solemnised around 12 years back, as her husband hasn't even passed the matric exam, is unemployed, as well as an alleged ruffian.

Following the panchayat's decision , Santara'shusband Dinesh and her in-laws locked her in a room of her parent's house in Pyariwas village, approximately 15 km from Dausa, on June 16 to take her away forcibly.

Santara managed to escape at around 2.30 am on Saturday and walked a distance of 3 kilometres before taking a bus to Jaipur, which is 60 km from Dausa. She reached a relative's house in Jaipur and contacted senior advocate Hemraj Gaur for assistance.

Santara's scared father, Ram Prasad Meena, also fled the village along with his family, including wife, old mother and two young daughters-in-laws, when he came to know about his daughter's disappearance.

Over the next two days, Hemraj Gaur sent representations to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, district collector and SP of the area, seeking police protection for the woman, but did not receive any favourable response.

Manoj and Babli after their marriage in Chandigarh in April 2007

The Manoj-Babli honour killing case was the honour killing of Indian newlyweds Manoj Banwala and Babli in June 2007 and the successive court case which historically convicted defendants for an honour killing. The killing was ordered by a khap panchayat (khap), a religious caste-based council among Jatts, in their Karora village in Kaithal district, Haryana.

The khap passed a decree prohibiting marriage against societal norms. Such caste-based councils are common in the inner regions of several Indian states, including Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar Pradesh, and parts of Rajasthan, and have been operating with government approval for years. In any event, the state government expressed no concern about the ruling of the khap panchayat.

Oppressed Ved Pal’s family members grieve his death in Mataurvillage in Karnal district, Haryana

Couples from the same gotra are siblings. For the crime of incest and for dishonouring the community, they should be killed’

Banawala Khap, March 12, 2009, on killing Sonia and Ved Pal in Karnal

Oppressed Ved Pal’s family members grieve his death in Mataurvillage in Karnal district, Haryana

‘What have you come here for? You all are impotent. You can’t change them. They will kill you too. We have to live and die by their rules’Misha, mother of Ved Pal, who was killed on July 23, 2009

Pesticide pills for 'wayward' girls (Times of India, September 8, 2009):

‘ With mobile phones and television, milna-julna (interaction between the sexes) is too much. What can parents do except kill a daughter who disobeys?' says a local teacher defensively.

Girls who survive their mother’s womb are brought up as daughters of the village. Not just [one village's] daughters, but of 12 neighbouring villages, says a khap member. All 12 villages form the Khidwali Bara khap, a Jat territorial unit. It decrees that boys and girls within these 12 villages cannot marry. Interestingly, the entire onus of ‘siblinghood’ rests on the girl. She is the keeper of village honour. Exceptions may be made for a boy, if the khap decides, but a girl is never allowed to bend the rules. 'If a girl married in her community’s villages, she will be in purdah in her own house. How can we allow that?' asks middle-aged Bedo.

"Vidya, who teaches at a government school in Sanghi, says she has had students who died in mysterious circumstances. 'We are only told so-and-so is dead,' she says. The physical trainer in her school adds, 'Kaaran koi nai batata (No one gives reasons).' On average, 10 to 12 healthy girls die every year, locals reckon, but there are no reliable figures.

"Generally, it’s the parents or father-brother duos who kill ‘wayward’ girls. A sympathetic mother may plead with a daughter to take the goliherself. A protesting daughter may be force-fed a pesticide pill, the preferred mode. The other route is death by hanging, all the better to ‘show’ it as suicide. No police, no complaint, no records. 'Yahanizzatdar woh hain jo ladki ko marte hain (Those who kill their girls are respected here),' says another teacher.

In one of the instances, the Bagpat district of Uttar Pradesh, Khap panchayat had issued a diktat that women will not be allowed to carry cell phones and they cannot visit the market place unescorted if below 40 years of age (Ramachandran, 2012). This clearly is a violation of fundamental right of freedom of movement throughout the territory of India as guaranteed under Article 19(1) (d) of the Constitution of India

Does India Still Need Khap Panchayats?

.•Khap panchayats, which predate India’s constitution by centuries, have recently been under the microscope after a series of rapes in Haryana were followed by shocking statements from khap members that seemed to blame women for the crime.•Critics have asked whether these all-male, unelected village councils should be allowed to exist in modern India. The groups, generally made up of men from one gotra, or subsect, of a caste, settle disputes and set unofficial laws about marriage and daily life in hundreds

of villages through Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

•While the Supreme Court and others have questioned their legality, eliminating them is unlikely, social scientists and law experts say. “We cannot ignore them; we cannot wish them away,” said Anand Kumar, a professor of sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University.

•While the role and prestige of these groups are shrinking in some ways, as younger generations become exposed to more modern ideas through urbanization and the media, they often have staunch supporters in legally elected local politicians, Mr. Kumar said.

•The dignity of human being ( Women, Men, children and also the people without gender) is inviolable. (This fundamental law is not valid for beasts).

•Those who do that, should be subjected to the hardest possible punishment available in our country.

•However, during making this PPT I could not control being emotional. This episode reminds me the historical facts from the medieval age ( law of jungles was in vogue). Now the question is, should the medieval age punishment procedure be implemented to these beasts

Panchayat can be broadly classified into threecategories SarvKhap Panchayat, Khap Panchayat, TappaPanchayat. Tappa Panchayat is mainly found in parts of Tamil Nadu and the omnipresent village panchayat which is most commonly found. The Sarv Khap is the largest panchayat which solves disputes of Khaps within its jurisdiction. It is an amalgamation of many Khaps within neighbouring areas in a district which have been living collectively since ages. One major criticism of the SarvKhap Panchayat is that the participation of women at the administrative level is negligible.

Women are not allowed to be representatives even when crimes are committed against women. They are considered inferior to men, next only to untouchables and scheduled castes in traditional Khap panchayats (Sangwan, 2011).