“HOMICIDE IN THE NAME OF HONOUR: AN EMERGING HATE CRIME IN INDIA: A THEMATIC STUDY”
AUTHOR – N. GOWTHAMAN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR (CRIME AND TORT), GOVERNMENT LAW COLLEGE, CHENGALPET.
BEST CITATION – N. GOWTHAMAN, HOMICIDE IN THE NAME OF HONOUR: AN EMERGING HATE CRIME IN INDIA: A THEMATIC STUDY, INDIAN JOURNAL OF LEGAL REVIEW (IJLR), 4 (1) of 2024, Pg. 41-49, APIS – 3920 – 0001 & ISSN – 2583-2344.
Abstract
All over the world, every year around 5000 women are killed by members of their own family, many of them in the name of redeeming the honour. Killing their siblings by members of the family are commonly known as “Honour killings”. Honour killing is a global phenomenon and has been widely reported not alone in India. The peculiar characteristics of India are that the entire society is divided by caste and community. As a result, Honour killings recur when conflict arises between diversified caste and communities. Intolerance of the so-called upper caste people to the inter-caste marriages or pre-marital relationships between adolescents are the prime causes of Honour killings in India. Inter-caste or intra-caste factors predominate as a reason behind people killing their children for restoring their disrepute Honour. Even marriages in the same gotra have emerged as a catalyst of Honour killing in India.
Hate crimes are often committed on the basis of differences in personal characteristics. But, the key element of any hate crime is the presence of bias motivation. The criminal act alone does not define a hate crime; rather the investigation of the crime must conclude that the offender was bias motivated.[1] The NGO-Evidence reported that 16 out of 39 honour killing cases were scheduled caste victims. As per this data, near about 50% honour killings is a caste biased motivated hate crime in Tamilnadu.[2] The present issue of honour killing considered as a hate crime in the above aforesaid characters
Key wods – Honour killing ., Hate crime, Message crime, homicide, caste
[1] Hate crime 2014, prepared by Tennessee Bureau of Investigation, USA.
[2] The data collected by the researcher from the Madurai based NGO EVIDENCE – the study period is 2011-2015.