The khap panchayat that murdered Radhika Yadav consisted of one man: her father. No village elders were present, no consensus was called for, and no formal diktat was issued. For the crime of being too independent, too financially secure, the sentence was delivered while she prepared breakfast.
Indian women might be raised to fear the outdoors, but we all instinctively know that the home is often the deadliest place we can be. Radhika Yadav, if she were still alive, might have agreed. Instead, the 25-year-old athlete and tennis coach, who ran her own tennis academy, was shot five times by her father Deepak Yadav at their home in a posh Gurugram sector. Four of those found their mark — three in her back, one in her shoulder.
Deepak Yadav surrendered almost immediately. After killing Radhika, he apparently called his brother, labelling the murder “kanya vadh” (filicide). He stated to the police that he was “furious over his daughter running her own tennis academy” and had murdered her over a dispute regarding its closure. Yadav went on to suggest that the police make a watertight case against him based on his statement, and the subsequent FIR ought to ensure that he is given the death sentence.
After snuffing out a young life, Yadav has moved on to his final performance: martyrdom. He now wants to die for a “righteous” murder that is already being applauded by his peers, who taunted him for living off Radhika’s income. While this is being spun around as “pashchatap”, can a premeditated act really lead to genuine remorse? According to reports, Yadav attempted to control every aspect of Radhika’s life — her tennis career, who she spoke to, and how much time she spent outside the house. What he does have instead of remorse, is the satisfaction of restoring honour to his family and community.
It helps us all to keep up the fiction of Gurgaon as a “modern” city, redolent with tech-powered possibilities — and not an extension of the hinterland’s most rotten, regressive ideas, dressed up in shiny chrome cladding. Because some problems, like the radical idea of women’s agency, cannot be solved by a 2×2 matrix.
The khaps
The shock ringing through Gurgaon right now is also the realisation of how little separates DLF Camellias from Kaithal. Even Yadav’s hatred toward his daughter isn’t original. It sits atop the steaming pile of other murders once presided over by Haryana’s khap panchayats, the kangaroo courts that terrorised North India through the mid-2000s. These unelected bodies — comprising village elders whose purpose was to uphold social values and intervene in village disputes — issued death sentences for couples who dared marry outside caste or gotra boundaries.
The most brutal cases became household names. In 2007, Manoj and Babli, 23 and 19 years old, respectively, eloped from Kaithal and got married in Chandigarh despite familial and community disapproval. They were both from the same gotra, or clan, which treats such unions as borderline incest because of the concept of “bhaichara”. The couple sought and were granted police protection when threats from the khap panchayat and their own families began. But the state failed them spectacularly.
Despite being in the presence of the police, they were abducted from a public bus and murdered by khap-affiliated relatives. Their decomposing bodies were recovered from a canal, nine days after, revealing signs of torture. The case was a sign — and a warning — that law enforcement was no match for traditional authority.
Throughout the mid-2000s, khap panchayats ran amok. In 2004, they forced a young couple in Jhajjar district to dissolve their marriage and abort their unborn child. In 2007, in Katlaheri village of Karnal district, they forcibly separated a 10-day-old infant from its parents, deeming the marriage “illegal”. In 2010, Monika and Rinku, both Jat teenagers, were killed and hanged outside their houses in Nimriwali village, as a reminder of the consequences of loving outside the bounds set by the community — all at the behest of a khap panchayat.
In 2012, they sought death for couples who elope and marry, and even suggested that 16-year-olds should be married to curb rape. By that same year, PILs were being filed against these bodies, and a Supreme Court panel recommended reigning in khap panchayats to prevent honour killings. But as recently as 2019, Naresh Tikait, Balyan khap leader and the president of Bharatiya Kisan Union, said that love marriages were unacceptable. “We raise girls, educate them and invest Rs 20-30 lakh on their upbringing and then they marry by their own choice. How can we accept that? We cannot allow that. If parents take all the pains to educate their girls then they also have a right over their marriages too,” he said.
Also read: Radhika Yadav murder isn’t about one rogue father. Women earning for family is still taboo
A mindset
After the landmark Manoj-Babli verdict sentenced five perpetrators to death in 2010, we declared victory against the wrong enemy. The khaps seemed to have retreated. Their public pronouncements began to grow muted. Between 2020 and 2021, several of these bodies participated in the farmers’ protest against the three contentious farm laws. So we confused the silencing of formal bodies with the defeat of their ideology.
But we had misunderstood the power structure entirely. The village elders were never the source, but simply the most visible manifestation of values that have always resided at the heart of every patriarchal household. Khap panchayats learned brutality from Indian families, not the other way around. The real infrastructure of “honour killings” didn’t need to convene under a banyan tree, when a daughter’s independence is discussed within the home as a family problem.
Khap panchayats merely gave this mindset a platform. When that platform was dismantled, the mindset simply returned to the family unit, where it had been thriving all along. Have you ever read a story of a mother who killed her “uncontrollable” son for bringing dishonour to the family through independence? Has any man ever been shot for refusing an arranged marriage? “Honour” is just a fancy term that families invented to cage female ambition.
Radhika Yadav died because her success threatened the fundamental order of patriarchy that demands women remain perpetual minors, forever seeking permission for decisions about their own lives. The father, the family, the khap panchayat that killed her have always ruled in favour of one belief — that the only honourable daughter is a dead one.
Karanjeet Kaur is a journalist, former editor of Arré, and a partner at TWO Design. She tweets @Kaju_Katri. Views are personal.
(Edited by Aamaan Alam Khan)