Gurugram: Noting that their crime was a “deliberate and calculated act” that has no place in civilised society, the Kaithal additional sessions court has sentenced two brothers to life imprisonment for honour killing and directed them to pay Rs 3 lakh as compensation to the victim’s family.
Sunil (27) and Dilbag (31), residents of Dindoli village in Haryana’s Jind district, had killed their brother-in-law Balinder in 2017. The couple had a love marriage against the wishes of the two brothers.
Judge Nandita Kaushik convicted the duo under Sections 302 (murder) read with Section 120B (criminal conspiracy) of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 27 of the Arms Act.
The brothers were handed a life term along with a fine of Rs 2.50 lakh each (one year additional incarceration in default) to both convicts as well as seven years rigorous imprisonment with Rs 50,000 fine each (four months additional incarceration in default).
All the sentences will run concurrently, and the period already served during trial will be adjusted against the substantive sentence, the court order said.
While pronouncing the sentence Friday, the judge noted that the murder was “not the result of sudden provocation or personal enmity, but a calculated and deliberate act, committed in the name of so-called family honour.”
The court observed that the actions of the convicts released a “domino effect” which resulted in the total breakdown of family and social stability for their sister. “The killing of Balinder not only ended the life of a young man but caused a chain of consequences resulting in the complete wreckage of lives of several members of his family,” the court verdict reads.
Balinder had married Pooja in 2014 and the couple had a two-and-a-half-year-old son, Preet. Pooja’s family was against the marriage but she used to speak to her mother over the phone.
“On 18 October, 2017, Balinder came and demanded my motorcycle to take Pooja to meet her mother, aunt, and brothers at Kaithal. I gave the motorcycle but was worried as I knew that Pooja’s family had not reconciled to their marriage. So, I accompanied my cousin, followed them on motorcycle. As my brother and his wife sat with the four in Jawahar Park, we also followed them in hiding,” Balinder’s younger brother wrote in his complaint.
Dilbag and Sunil suddenly started roughing up Balinder and before he could intervene, they whipped out pistols and fired at him, he said. “We rushed Balinder to Shah Hospital at Kaithal where the doctors declared Balinder dead.”
Later, the widowed woman was married off to another man in June 2019 but she died of health complications in October last year, leaving the child orphaned.
“The minor child, already having lost his father, subsequently estranged from the family of his mother, now is again in the complainant’s family bearing the scar of a disrupted lineage and an uncertain destiny,” judge Kaushik noted.
The court directed that the whole fine of Rs 3 lakh be divided equally between Balinder’s mother Sona Devi and the couple’s son.
“The compensation is intended to provide some degree of financial relief for the grandmother and the child, who are direct victims of the consequences of the offence,” it said, noting that in spite of her old age, Sona Devi was saddled with caring for her minor grandson because she has suffered an “irreparable loss caused by the acts of the convicts.”
The court stressed that the sentence should “reflect the collective conscience of society and send a clear message that honour killings have no place in a civilised society governed by the rule of law.”
Judge Kaushik added that although the defence urged leniency on the grounds of the young age of the convicts and the fact that they were first-time offenders, the seriousness of the offence and its extendable impact upon several lives justified no sympathy.
“The offence committed was brutal, planned, and motivated by misguided ideas of honour, for which there can be no justification,” the judgment reads.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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