Khaps, kin will have to give freedom of choice, says HC

Saurabh Malik

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 4

Khap panchayats and even parents, divorced from the idea of allowing youngsters tie the knot with the partners of their choice will have to bow down to individual preferences. Deciding in favour of runaway couples, the Punjab and Haryana High Court has accorded greater significance to individual preferences over age-old customs that deny adults the freedom of choice; and has directed the setting up of a separate cell in every police district for receiving complaints from such couples.

“If age-old customs deny adults the freedom of choice as marriage partners, they must be treated as obnoxious and will have no place in the constitutional ethos…. If khaps or the parents oppose, they shall be made to bow down to individual preferences that must be taken as mature actions of informed adults,” Justice K. Kannan has ruled.

The ruling

The police would not compel adult couples to return to parents; and would keep an army comprising “friends of people”. They would be chosen from progressive-minded people in a village or group of villages where honour killing is rampant and would provide emotional support and counselling.

They would be sounded by the police on receiving complaints to play a tempering role to diffuse tension in the village. Every suspected case of honour killing would be considered for entrustment to a “high power officer”, not below the rank of a DSP.

The Secretary, Home Department, would also convene a meeting with high-ranked police officers for evolving an acceptable protocol for persons competent to investigate and prosecute honour killings cases.

Justice Kannan added the police must protect couples who runaway, by housing them in protection homes, carrying out preventive arrests of people likely to harm, “or fending off khaps from making any unsavoury diktats.”