Kaithal/Karnal, March 30
June 15, 2007. The Haryana Roadways bus had moved out of the Pipli bus stand. A few kilometres down the road, it stopped at the toll plaza on the highway. As if on cue and before the passengers could realise what was happening, four or five men got into the bus and violently pulled up a cowering, young couple. Slaps rained on them as they were pushed out of the bus.

The passengers, by all accounts, remained silent and curious spectators. Nobody intervened, not even the policeman escorting Manoj and Babli from the court. Their sympathy apparently lay with the strangers who, it appeared to them, were foiling an attempt by the young man to brainwash the girl into leaving with him.

The intruders hemmed the couple in and forced them into a black Scorpio. It soon turned around and sped off, leaving the onlookers to gossip loudly about marraige and morals. The driver of the public bus also appeared indifferent as he shrugged and drove off. It was clearly none of his business if two of his passengers were beaten up and pushed out of the bus by people who were in any case known to the couple. Wasn’t the girl crying out for ‘Bhaiyya’ to show some mercy ?

Attention of the caretaker at the toll plaza was drawn by the commotion and he watched the couple being violently bundled into the Scorpio. He had the presence of mind to take down the number ( HR 08G 3689) and inform the police. The police dutifully sent out a wireless message giving the number and description of the black Scorpio, which was later found to have been hired by the abductors.

But to the eternal shame of Haryana police, they failed to trace the vehicle or the driver over the next fortnight. The driver of the bus did not think it necessary to lodge a complaint when the bus reached the Karnal bus depot. And none of the passengers was perturbed enough to force the bus driver to stop at the nearest police station. Could the bus have followed the Scorpio?

What happened to the couple thereafter can only be imagined because the culprits continue to deny that the dead bodies recovered from the canal were that of the couple. But the limbs of the dead bodies, that of a young man and a woman, were tied together. The bodies bore injuries which were ante-mortem by nature and the doctors had no option but to conclude that the couple, whoever they were, were tortured and killed before their bodies were thrown into the canal.

The poor lovers must have been killed the same day because the hired vehicle was let off . But the driver failed to muster courage to report to the police till pressure by the media forced the police to arrest him on July 1, a fortnight after the abduction.

The assailants apparently took care to tie bricks to the dead bodies so that they would not float to the surface. They were finally fished out on June 23. Nine days in the water had disfigured and bloated the bodies beyond recognition. But as providence would have it, the shirt worn by the man and the woman’s anklet were preserved at the police station, which cremated the dead bodies as ‘unclaimed’. No attempt was made to get in touch with the girl’s family members, who had on June 20 lodged a complaint about the abduction.

What was worse is that at the time of the abduction, there was no policeman accompanying the couple. They had got down from the bus at Pipli because, they claimed, the couple wanted them to leave.

This the court must have found improbable. Also because Manoj had called up his mother from a STD booth at the Pipli bus stand. He had run out of the ‘balance’ in his pre-paid mobile, which required to be re-charged. And he confided to his mother that family members of Babli were following them.

If they were scared enough to have sought police protection, would they have asked their escorts to leave with the knowledge that they were being followed ? The only conclusion is that the policemen colluded with the ‘powerful’ , as they are used to do, and drove the couple to a death trap.

Disturbing questions abound. How difficult is it for the Haryana police to trace a taxi once they know the number and have the description and the place it was seen lately ? Clearly, they made no serious effort to track down the taxi.

Would it have made a difference if the police had rushed to Babli’s house in the village ? Once they received the information about the abduction, wasn’t it the logical next step ? The pressure could have dissuaded the family from taking the law into their hands. The police would at least have known who were missing from the house at that time. It would have helped them in the investigation and also helped them in nailing the culprits later. But that was not to be.

There is sufficient indication, if not evidence, to indicate that the police were influenced by the local politician who wanted them to look away. Why else would they refuse to entertain a missing report from the boy’s family till they were forced to accept one under pressure from the media ?

Three days after Kaithal police lodged the ‘missing’ diary, they recovered the two dead bodies of a couple. Any other police force would have tried to find out if the dead bodies were those of the missing couple. But not our men from Haryana. They diligently went through a regulation post-mortem before cremating the dead bodies as ‘unclaimed’.

No photographs were taken and no video recording was done despite the commotion the case had already created by then.

The Haryana police is as guilty as the six men who executed the deadly plan of killing the lovers. But although they have now been indicted by the court, at least the six of them in the escort party, will the government have the political courage to take action against others. 

Chandigarh, March 30
Can honour killings be stopped in Haryana ? While the Centre mulls over a law that will make every participant of a Khap or caste panchayat liable and punishable for the crime of ‘honour killing’, experts and lawyers alike are unanimous in holding that it would not be enough.

For one, it would be difficult to establish the fact of the meeting itself. Such meetings can not only take place beyond closed doors but a small group of people can actually speak over the telephone or meet anywhere to evade detection.

One of the deterrents that requires serious consideration is to extend the punishment to the family members of the guilty. While the actual act of killing may lead to punishment, as in the case of Manoj and Babli’s murder, other family members who instigated, inspired , sheltered and helped the culprits, are equally culpable but get away without any punishment.

The thinking, therefore, is that once a court of law holds people guilty of committing the crime, their families should also be made to bear the full vigour of the law. They can be blacklisted for a specific period and all government subsidy, loan and benefits including jobs should be withdrawn and the families barred from holding passport, ration cards, driving license etc.

Yet another deterrent could be to hold local office bearers of the panchayat and/or the Khap panchayat responsible once the guilt is established. The onus of proving their innocence should then lie on them and not on the prosecution.

At the same time, deterrent action must be woven into the law to make the police pay for their laxity and indifference. In most cases it is the connivance or collusion of the police that allows the crime to take place. Therefore some legal provision to make the district police, from the top to the bottom, pay for their failure to prevent such crimes can do the trick, it is felt.

This may take the form of fines ranging from a few thousand to a few lakhs depending on the policemen’s rank. The amount thus collected can be paid to the families of the deceased as some sort of compensation for the lives lost.

Kaithal, March 30
It could have been just any other love story ending on a lived-happily-ever-after note. Only Manoj and Babli were not destined to be any ordinary couple. Their commitment to their love and rebellion against rigid societal norms that run the lives of village folk made them extra-ordinary. Even in death.

Their story of togetherness goes back to 2005. There’s no date because love usually happens just like that, without provocation or planning. At the village school. Manoj was two years her senior. Little is known about how the affair blossomed under the wary eyes of the village fanatics and the moral police. Despite them, however, Manoj and Babli, both belonging to the Banwala gotra, took the road of love, that led eventually to their death.

Recalls Chandrapati, Manoj’s mother, “We knew about Babli long before they decided to marry each other. She would call up often and I would sermonize to her about staying away from Manoj, fearing the fallout of such an alliance. They were, however, unconcerned and chatted for hours together. If I did walk into the room while they were talking, Manoj would quickly disconnect the phone and run off to avoid any questioning.”

Like any other youngster in the first flush of romance, they went headlong into the affair that raised the hackles of everyone around them. “I even went to Babli’s house and told her mother that Manoj and Babli were seeing each other. I asked her to dissuade Babli or quickly marry them before the word spreads,” Chandrapati explains.

Manoj’s mention is enough to break down her steely exterior as she sobs, “He would sleep at the TV repair shop he ran and return home in the mornings. Sometimes I think he’ll walk in through that gate calling out ‘Ma’ just one more time.”

The shop, located in the area known as Baba ka Dera where Babli used to stay, has been lying locked since he left and he’s never coming back.

Speaking of him, Chandrapati rewinds to April 5, 2007, the time she last saw him, “He ate his food and left to sleep at the shop since he had a class XII compartment exam in English to take the next day. Unlike other days, next morning, he did not show up.”

Then, Babli’s uncle came looking for Manoj. “He said he had come to recover some money that Manoj had borrowed, had tea and left when I told him that manoj was away for an exam. We only discovered late in the evening that Babli, too, was missing and the two had run away,” the mother says.

After absconding, they boarded a bus to Chandigarh and got married at a Durga temple in Sector 56 the very next day. Chandrapati pulls out two photographs of their marriage, her only treasure.

“Manoj called up after a month of his marriage. In June, they came to Kaithal to depose before the court that Babli had married Manoj of her own free will and had not been kidnapped like her family had claimed.

The lawyer told us to keep away from court lest Babli’s family gets wind of their presence,” she says, regretting that she missed the opportunity of meeting them before they were killed.

Today, with the court pronouncing its order, Chandrapati feels Manoj and Babli’s love has been vindicated. It has firmed her conviction that people can die but love survives. Against all odds. Just the way Manoj and Babli’s did. 

Karnal, March 30
No lawyer from Karnal agreed to take up the case against the accused. The family of the deceased, Manoj, were, therefore, forced to get lawyers from Hisar to pursue their complaint in court.

The defence faced no such hassle though and a battery of local lawyers appeared for them in court. And they consistently argued that there is no case against the accused.

Indeed they accused of media trial and blamed them for the hype created over the case. “ But for the media, the accused would have been acquitted by now,” claimed a defence counsel Jagmal Singh Jattain. There is, he added, no shred of evidence against the accused and all were concocted by the media.

To start with, the defence claimed, there is no evidence to prove that there was ever any meeting of the Khap. So where is the question of ordering any killing, honourable or otherwise, they asked. But they have no explanation as to why the Khap in that case publicly felicitated the accused for upholding the values dear to the Khap.

Similarly, the defence argued that there is no evidence to suggest that Manoj and Babli are dead. For all that is known, they might still be alive and living happily, they argued. The two ‘unclaimed and unidentified’ dead bodies fished out of a canal by Hisar police, they said, were cremated and there is no evidence to suggest they were that of Manoj and Babli.

Jattain also claimed that Manoj’s mother had refused to undergo a DNA test to establish the facts. “ If they are so sure of their facts, why not go through the test,” he asked.

But the prosecution lawyer, Lal Bahaur Singh Khowal, successfully established that the recovery from the Scorpio of torn photographs, silver bells from Babli’s ghungroo and buttons off Manoj’s shirt indicated what had happened. Moreover, the ghungroo and the shirt were recovered from Hisar police who admitted that they belonged to the ‘unclaimed’ bodies. And forensic tests established they were the same.

The defence also questioned the wedding itself. Nobody knows that the wedding took place or where, they argued. So why would anyone threaten them ?

But the prosecution also relied upon the statement given by the contractor at the toll plaza and the last telephone call made by Manoj and Babli to his mother. They had clearly stated that they were being followed by the family members of Babli.

While Khowal hopes to appeal for enhancing the sentence of Ganga Raj, the defence will appeal to set aside the order of the trial court. The last of this case has clearly not been heard.

Karnal, March 30
Manoj-Babli honour killing is not the only barbaric case. The Khap Panchayats in Haryana have arrogated to themselves the role of parallel judiciary with self assumed powers to order “social boycott, death and exile”.

Khaps are traditional, area-based community groups and although rulings have no legal validity, these panchayats oppose and annul marriages within the same ‘Gotra’ (lineage) and deliver cruel punishments to ‘erring’ couples.

On July 24, 2009, a Khap panchayat ‘banished’ the couple Ravinder and Shilpa and Ravinder’s entire family from their village in Jhajjar area. It ordered their banishment on the ground that Ravinder was a ‘Gehlot’ from Dharana, and Shilpa is a ‘Kadyan’ from Siwah, in Panipat.

The Kadyan khap panchayat ‘invalidated’ their marriage on the pretext that they were from the same “Gotra”as family of Ravinder lives in the same village as Shilpa’s extended family.

Unable to withstand the severe pressure from the Khap, Ravinder, who married Shilpa, attempted suicide, but failed. He and his family shifted to the house of a relative in another village and cannot visit his village without police protection.

What was astonishing was that the order of ‘banishment’ of Ravinder’s family by the Kadyan khap Panchayat came only about 24 hours after the mindless killing of a young man Ved Pal Mor ,who was lynched by the villagers of Singhwal in the very presence of the police. The “sin” committed by Ved Pal Mor committed was that he married a girl from the same Gotra.

In June 2009, another couple, Anita and Sonu, who had ‘violated’ the Khap traditions, were lured back to their village in Rohtak and stabbed to death in public.

Pawan and Kavita in Katlehari village faced the ire of the Khap when they had one year old son. The Khap declared that they were brother and sister and their marriage was broken. Later they approached the court to get the marriage revalidated and also got back their son.

Gurdev — Cousin Has wife and two children aged 9 and 7. Agriculturist Sentence: Death

Satish — Cousin Has wife and two daughters  Agriculturist Sentence: Death

Baru Ram — Uncle Has old mother and 6 children, 2 of them married. Agriculturist Sentence: Death

Suresh — Brother The only bread earner in the family  Agriculturist  Sentence: Death

Rajinder — Uncle Sentence: Death

Ganga Raj — Politician A powerful man of the village and a distant  relative of Babli. Sentence: Life term

Mandeep — Driver The taxi driver got married just a few months before the abduction Sentence: 7 years