this presentation is about the khap panchayts in india

1. BY
DR SHAILA PARVEEN
DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK
M.G.KASHI VIDYAPITH VARANASI

3. A 20-year-old tribal woman was allegedly gang-
raped in a West Bengal village on the orders of a
Salishi Sabha, the state’s equivalent of khap
panchayats (feared for dispensing kangaroo court-
style justice), the police said on Wednesday.
Falling in love with a man from outside her
community and then failing to cough up Rs.
50,000 fine imposed by the Salishi Sabha led to
the woman being humiliated with the sexual
assault

4. According to the woman, the salishi sabha
summoned her and her beloved on Monday
and detained them through the day and
night. After her family said they could not
pay the fine, the salishi sabha allegedly
ordered the mass rape t’s horrific.
They (rapists) are all our neighbours and I
call some of them as kaka (uncle) and some
others as dada (elder brother) or bhai
(brother),” she added.

9. Those who defy diktats have to pay a heavy price. Take the
case of Munirul Haque of Betla village in East Midnapore
district. A ‘shalishi adalat’ presided over by Nizamuddin
Alam, a local Trinamool Congress leader, asked Munirul
to pay a fine of Rs 25,000 for allegedly making a pass at
the daughter a trader in the village in September last year.
Munirul, a poor farm labourer, said that he could not pay
such a huge amount and pleaded for a waiver of the fine.
Nizamuddin, a cousin of the trader, then decreed that in
lieu of the fine, Munirul would have to give his 16-year-
old daughter in marriage to a 46-year-old man who
already had two wives. Munirul had to agree because he
had no alternative.

10. Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh: A Khap Panchayat or caste
council in Madhi village in Uttar Pradesh allegedly
stripped a woman, blackened her face and beat her for
helping young couple to elope. The woman's son who
tried to intervene and protect his mother was also beaten
up.
"They removed my clothes and beat me with a baton. They
were drunk. Then four people called a panchayat where
they blackened my face and misbehaved with me," says
Bala Devi who told the police that the men also blackened
her face.
Her son says the men were from the village Panchayat
and did not care about beating him up too when he tried
to protect his mother.

11. A khap panchayat of the Meena community
near Rajasthan's Dausa district has ordered the
abduction of Santara Meena, a 25-year-old teacher
in a government-run school.
The woman's fault is that she refused to accept
her marriage, solemnised around 12 years back, as
her husband hasn't even passed the matric exam, is
unemployed, as well as an alleged ruffian.
Following the panchayat's decision , Santara's
husband Dinesh and her in-laws locked her in a
room of her parent's house in Pyariwas village,
approximately 15 km from Dausa, on June 16 to
take her away forcibly.

12. Santara managed to escape at around 2.30 am on Saturday
and walked a distance of 3 kilometres before taking a bus to
Jaipur, which is 60 km from Dausa. She reached a relative's
house in Jaipur and contacted senior advocate Hemraj Gaur
for assistance.
Santara's scared father, Ram Prasad Meena, also fled the
village along with his family, including wife, old mother and
two young daughters-in-laws, when he came to know about
his daughter's disappearance.
Over the next two days, Hemraj Gaur sent representations
to Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot, district collector
and SP of the area, seeking police protection for the woman,
but did not receive any favourable response.

13. Manoj and Babli after their marriage in Chandigarh in April 2007

14. The Manoj-Babli honour killing case was the honour killing of
Indian newlyweds Manoj Banwala and Babli in June 2007 and the
successive court case which historically convicted defendants for an
honour killing. The killing was ordered by a khap panchayat (khap),
a religious caste-based council among Jatts, in their Karora village
in Kaithal district, Haryana.
The khap passed a decree prohibiting marriage against societal
norms. Such caste-based councils are common in the inner regions
of several Indian states, including Haryana, Punjab, western Uttar
Pradesh, and parts of Rajasthan, and have been operating with
government approval for years. In any event, the state government
expressed no concern about the ruling of the khap panchayat.

15. Oppressed Ved Pal’s family members grieve his death in Mataur
village in Karnal district, Haryana

16. Couples from the same gotra are siblings. For the crime of incest and
for dishonouring the community, they should be killed’
Banawala Khap, March 12, 2009, on killing Sonia and Ved Pal in
Karnal
Oppressed Ved Pal’s family members grieve his death in Mataur
village in Karnal district, Haryana
‘What have you come here for? You all are impotent. You can’t change
them. They will kill you too. We have to live and die by their rules’
Misha, mother of Ved Pal, who was killed on July 23, 2009

17. Pesticide pills for 'wayward' girls (Times of India, September 8, 2009):
‘ With mobile phones and television, milna-julna (interaction between the sexes) is
too much. What can parents do except kill a daughter who disobeys?' says a local
teacher defensively.
Girls who survive their mother’s womb are brought up as daughters of the village. Not just [one
village's] daughters, but of 12 neighbouring villages, says a khap member. All 12 villages form the
Khidwali Bara khap, a Jat territorial unit. It decrees that boys and girls within these 12 villages
cannot marry. Interestingly, the entire onus of ‘siblinghood’ rests on the girl. She is the keeper of
village honour. Exceptions may be made for a boy, if the khap decides, but a girl is never allowed to
bend the rules. 'If a girl married in her community’s villages, she will be in purdah in her own
house. How can we allow that?' asks middle-aged Bedo.

18. "Vidya, who teaches at a government school in Sanghi, says she has
had students who died in mysterious circumstances. 'We are only told
so-and-so is dead,' she says. The physical trainer in her school adds,
'Kaaran koi nai batata (No one gives reasons).' On average, 10 to 12
healthy girls die every year, locals reckon, but there are no reliable
figures.
"Generally, it’s the parents or father-brother duos who kill ‘wayward’
girls. A sympathetic mother may plead with a daughter to take the goli
herself. A protesting daughter may be force-fed a pesticide pill, the
preferred mode. The other route is death by hanging, all the better to
‘show’ it as suicide. No police, no complaint, no records. 'Yahan
izzatdar woh hain jo ladki ko marte hain (Those who kill their girls are
respected here),' says another teacher.

19. In one of the instances, the Bagpat district of Uttar Pradesh, Khap panchayat had
issued a diktat that women will not be allowed to carry cell phones and they
cannot visit the market place unescorted if below 40 years of age (Ramachandran,
2012). This clearly is a violation of fundamental right of freedom of movement
throughout the territory of India as guaranteed under Article 19(1) (d) of the
Constitution of India

21. Does India Still Need Khap Panchayats?
.
•Khap panchayats, which predate India’s constitution by
centuries, have recently been under the microscope after a
series of rapes in Haryana were followed by shocking
statements from khap members that seemed to blame
women for the crime.
•Critics have asked whether these all-male, unelected
village councils should be allowed to exist in modern
India. The groups, generally made up of men from one
gotra, or subsect, of a caste, settle disputes and set
unofficial laws about marriage and daily life in hundreds
of villages through Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

22. •While the Supreme Court and others have
questioned their legality, eliminating them is
unlikely, social scientists and law experts say.
“We cannot ignore them; we cannot wish them
away,” said Anand Kumar, a professor of
sociology at Jawaharlal Nehru University.
•While the role and prestige of these groups are
shrinking in some ways, as younger generations
become exposed to more modern ideas through
urbanization and the media, they often have
staunch supporters in legally elected local
politicians, Mr. Kumar said.

23. •The dignity of human being ( Women, Men, children
and also the people without gender) is inviolable.
(This fundamental law is not valid for beasts).
•Those who do that, should be subjected to the hardest
possible punishment available in our country.
•However, during making this PPT I could not
control being emotional. This episode reminds me the
historical facts from the medieval age ( law of jungles
was in vogue). Now the question is, should the
medieval age punishment procedure be implemented
to these beasts

27.  Panchayat can be broadly classified into threecategories Sarv
Khap Panchayat, Khap Panchayat, Tappa
Panchayat. Tappa Panchayat is mainly found in parts of Tamil
Nadu and the omnipresent village panchayat which is most
commonly found. The Sarv Khap is the largest panchayat which
solves disputes of Khaps within its jurisdiction. It is an amalgamation
of many Khaps within neighbouring areas in a district which have
been living collectively since ages. One major criticism of the Sarv
Khap Panchayat is that the participation of women at the
administrative level is negligible.
 Women are not allowed to be representatives even when
crimes are committed against women. They are considered
inferior to men, next only to untouchables and scheduled
castes in traditional Khap panchayats (Sangwan, 2011).