TNI Bureau: In a heartbreaking news, a Delhi Court today has awarded death sentence to five members of a family for killing a teenaged couple for honour in 2010.
Additional Sessions Judge Ramesh Kumar Singhal handed down death sentence to the five persons, who had mercilessly tortured and then electrocuted their daughter and her lover as they were opposed to her plans to get married to the boy belonging to a Scheduled Caste.
“In the case in hand, cold blooded, brutal murders through electrocution have been committed even as there was no provocation on behalf of the victims, making it a rarest of rare case, which calls for no punishment other than capital punishment” ASJ Singhal said.
The case pertains to the honour killing of Yogesh, 20, and Asha, 19. The duo were in love and had disclosed to their parents that they intended to get married.
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Asha’s family had reservations over the boy’s caste and in June 2010, her parents Suraj and Maya, along with his uncle Om Prakash, his wife Khushboo and Asha’s cousin Sanjeev, killed the couple by beating and electrocuting them.
Meanwhile, in 1990 the National Commission for Women set up a statutory body in order to address the issues of honor killings among some ethnic groups in North India.
Though honor killings in many parts of India ceased about a century ago, largely due to the activism and influence of reformists such as Vidyasagar and Raja Ram Mohan Roy, it is still reported in northern regions of India.
The offence is not only inhuman and barbaric but the savage nature of the crime has shocked the human conscience. Such cruel and barbaric acts cannot be allowed to take place in a civilized society. Exemplary punishment to the culprit and mass awareness programmme to refrain from the heinous crime is need of the hour.