SEXUAL HEALTH AND HUMAN RIGHTS A legal and ... - The ICHRP

the State and its citizens is one of trust. As the trustee of the people, the State must be
dedicated to uplifting and ameliorating the condition of the people.
“Simultaneously it is the duty of the State to protect the people from crime by
maintaining law and order. Although the State cannot be held liable to pay
compensation for every breach of law and order, but cases of heinous crime,
specially where the woman is the victim, the State must show its sense of
humanism. In the present case, not only the petitioner is a woman, but most
importantly, she belongs to a poor family, which is forced to eke out its living for
its sheer survival. Financial crushed, socially ignored, the family deserves to be
uplifted from its pitiable condition…”
Holding that the Directive Principles of State Policy that impose a duty on the State to
provide public assistance and to improve the standard of living of the people have to be read
in the fundamental right to life contained in Article 21, it further held that,
“Right to life, not only imposes a constitutional duty on the State to protect the
life of people, but most importantly, imposes a duty on the State to ameliorate
the condition of the life of the people. The concept of social justice permeates the
Constitution like the golden rays of the sun. In order to eliminate the darkness
which has fallen on the family of petitioner, it is imperative that the light of
constitutional provision should permeate through their lives. The dreams of the
Constitution cannot be confined merely to the preamble of the Constitution but
need to be concretized, need to be implemented, and need to be diffused through
the lives of our brotherens, who are poor and faceless, voiceless and hapless.”
5.8 Honour crimes
The prevalence of honour crimes is reported in India and Bangladesh. In India, such crimes
take place largely in the context of caste. In Bangladesh, fatwas being issued by local bodies
have included the stoning, flogging and forced marriages of girls for adultery.
In India, the judges of various High Courts and the Supreme Court have been calling for an
end to honour crimes. 529 However, a recent case where the Supreme Court commuted the
death sentence in an honour killing matter on grounds that a person cannot be fully blamed
for social conditioning on caste has generated a lot of debate. The discussion of the Supreme
Court in commuting the death sentence is reproduced below for the purposes of discussion:
“ Sushma was the younger sister of this accused. It is a common experience that
when the younger sister commits something unusual and in this case it was an
intercaste, intercommunity marriage out of the secret love affair, then in the
society it is the elder brother who justifiably or otherwise is held responsible for
not stopping such affair. It is held as the family defeat. At times, he has to suffer
taunts and snide remarks even from the persons who really have no business to
poke their nose into the affairs of the family. Dilip, therefore, must have been a
prey of the so-called insult which his younger sister had imposed upon his family
and that must have been in his mind for seven long months. It has come in the
529 See for instance, Sujit Kumar and Ors. v. State Of U.P. and Ors 2002(3) Civil Court Cases 3 (Allahabad) and
Lata Singh v. State Of U.P. and Another, Writ Petition (crl.) 208 of 2004, Supreme Court of India (Date of
Decision: 7 July 2006)
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