Certain Cases

In 2014, a chunni was reportedly used to strangle Pachala Deepthi, a software engineer from Hyderabad. She was allegedly killed by her family for marrying a colleague.

This year, 25-year old Kasturi and her husband Basavraj were stabbed to death in Bangalore , allegedly by her  brother, soon after they eloped from their homes.

                                 

 In my opinion there are various reasons why people decide to kill their daughter in the name of protecting their family honor. The most obvious reason for this practice is because of the fact that the caste system continues to be at its rigid best and also because people from the rural areas refuse to change their attitude towards marriage.

 According to them, if any daughter dares to disobey her parents on the issue of marriage and decides to marry a man of her wishes but from another caste, it would bring disrepute to the family honor and hence they decide to give the ultimate sentence, that is death, to the daughter.

                                      

                                 

                

  The other reason why honor killings are taking place is because the mentality of people has not changed and they just cannot accept that marriages can take place outside one's caste.

Irrespective of class or levels of education, families involved in honor killings virtually never see themselves as criminals or offenders. We rarely see any feeling of guilt.

                     

There is a misconception regarding the practice of honor killing that it is a practice that is limited to the rural areas only but the truth is that it is spread over both urban and rural areas so we cannot isolate honor killings to rural areas only, though one has to admit that majority of the killings take place in the rural areas. But it has also been seen recently that even the metropolitan cities are not safe from this crime.

                       

What can we do to prevent Honor Killing???

Firstly, the mentality of the people has to change and when we say that the mentality has to change, we mean to say that parents should accept their children's wishes regarding marriage as it is they who have to lead a life with their life partners. 

  

                      

                  

   

                             

Secondly, we need to have stricter laws to tackle these kinds of killings as this is a crime for  which  one cannot be forgiven because we do not have the right to kill innocent people.