Honour killing was punished with a death sentence when a Rampur court ordered a man to hang for hacking his 19-year-old daughter two years ago. Last month the Supreme Court had ruled that honour killing, for whatever reason, came within the category of the rarest of rare cases and deserved the death penalty.
Shaukat Saifi, a 63-year-old farmer from Kirincha village in Rampur, killed his daughter Nasreen Jehan on June 20, 2009, when she turned up with a boy with whom she had spent the night before. She came home and sought permission to marry Yassen, also from the same village, but Saifi flew into a rage as the boy was from a different sub-caste.
"Saifi was livid and would hear none of it for both belonged to different sub-castes. Saifis are carpenters and the boy was a fakeer, considered much lower in the social hierarchy. The old man tried to put sense into his daughter's head but she refused to budge from her stance. Even the boy pleaded with him to see reason and permit them to tie the knot. When the girl said she was leaving with Yaseen, Saifi lost his head. He hacked the girl to death right in front of everyone in the house," said Mohammad Ismail, a neighbour of Saifi who first reported the killing.
Pronouncing the verdict, additional district judge Kamini Pathak held that the case qualified as "rarest of the rare". The judge maintained that such an act by a father was most gruesome for a father's home is considered to be the safest place for a daughter.
This could well be the end of the road for Saifi. "We are in no position to go in for an appeal," his son Qayum said. The young man, who had to quit school and do menial job to maintain a family of five, maintained that his father did nothing wrong. "I have said it earlier, and will say the same thing till my dying day before anyone, that my father is no common criminal and he has not committed any crime."
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