Stressing that khap panchayats are illegal, and describing the honour killings they order as "shameful and barbaric", the Supreme Court today said that police officials and bureaucrats who fail to check them should be punished.
Khap panchayats function as kangaroo courts in villages in Haryana, Punjab and UP - they deal mainly with issues of caste and have dared the government repeatedly to check their power.
"We have in recent years heard of khap panchayats (known as katta panchayats in Tamil Nadu) which often decree or encourage honour killings or other atrocities in an institutionalised way on boys and girls of different castes and religion, who wish to get married or have been married, or interfere with the personal lives of people...." The Supreme Court said today.
"Atrocities in respect of personal lives of people committed by brutal, feudal-minded persons deserve harsh punishment," Justice Katju said.
The Supreme Court wants criminal action against khap panchayat members who ask for the deaths of couples who married out of caste.
Like Manoj and Babli from Haryana's Kaithar district, who were found floating in a canal weeks after they married in defiance of a khap panchayat order in June 2007. First, the Kaithal Khap Panchayat ordered their persecution - it had been petitioned by Babli's family which felt Babli and Manoji's relationship was incestuous. Manoj asked a local court for help and was granted police protection. Despite that, the couple was kidnapped and killed.
''We didn't even receive their body. We had to make peace with their death by seeing the remains of their clothes," said Manoj's sister, Seema.
Despite the worrying frequency of these "honour killings", politicians from states like Haryana have refused to support campaigns for curbing the power of these vigilante courts. And in the villages where their authority is unquestioned, the police often chooses to ignore publically delivered khap verdicts that declare death for offenders.