Safe houses for women at risk of honour killing

Women in India who go against traditions and their parents and snub arranged marriages to marry men they love will now get police protection in safe houses. Hundreds of newlywed couples in Haryana, in Northern India, had been attacked by angry relatives for ignoring the strict social codes that dictate who they should marry. Keeping to Conservative traditions and caste purity are highly important in the cut-off villages of Haryana. As a result, the state has grown notorious as the “honour killing” capital of India. ‘Brides’ are often as young as 12 in the region where in some areas the sex ratio is so badly skewed that there are 370 women per 1,000 men.But now under a trial scheme to start this month, newlyweds who have married for love and are judged to be most at risk will start their lives together under armed guard.

Twenty-one year old Sunita Prakash, who was five months’ pregnant, and Jasbir Singh, 22, were dragged from their home by a mob of her male relatives last year, The Times newspaper reported. The couple had been strangled, and their bodies were dumped outside Sunita’s father’s house. Sunita and Jasbir’s only crime was to have fallen for each other despite living in the same village — a taboo similar to incest, according to the codes of their caste, The Jats. “We are not ashamed of it . . . we have restored the village’s pride,” one of Sunita’s cousins said. Police said that her father confessed to the murders.

A safe house is now being set up in the Rohtak district of Haryana to protect young men and women from crimes like these. If it works, the project will be rolled out further. Under the programme, police will explain the law to councils of village elders, who often give honour killings the go ahead. "Only in Haryana are women treated as commodities,” Ranjana Kumari, director of the Center for Social Research, told The Times of India. “They are bought, sold, killed, discarded and even exchanged. Honour killings, child marriage and female infanticide all are taking place in the name of custom, she said. “It shows a totally desensitized political class."

Increasingly, young people living in the region are choosing to marry without getting their parents’ nod as the villages become more exposed to the outside world. And cases of children being harmed by their own relatives are on the rise, say officials. “The safe house may provide temporary relief,” said Javeed Alam, the chairman of the Indian Council of Social Science Research. “What I think is needed is strong state protection to people who want to exit the community. But here is the catch: the government in Haryana is dominated by the Jats, and, I suspect, sizeable sections of the ruling establishment are in sympathy with the perpetrators of crime.”

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children