Madras High Court: Raising concerns over the rising cases of honour killing, the Bench of V. Ramasubramanian, J., issued directions in order to check the menace of honour killing. The Court further ordered that the directions are to be The directions are as follows-
- Creation of Special Cells in every district comprising of the Superintendent of Police, the District Social Welfare Officer and District Adi-Dravida Welfare Officer, to receive petitions/complaints of harassment of and threat to couples of inter-caste marriage.
- Creation of a 24 hour helpline by the Special Cells, to receive and register complaints and to provide necessary assistance/advice and protection to the couple.
- The State of Tamil Nadu to examine the possibility of generating FIR automatically, upon the receipt of complaints from the aggrieved couple via the Crime and Criminal Tracking Network and Systems.
- The Special Cell formed in each District are to monitor the receipt of complaints through helpline or otherwise, the registration of the same and the action taken by the concerned police on a regular basis.
- The Station House Officer would be duty bound to provide protection to the couple who are moving about within their jurisdiction.
- The special are to take proactive steps to provide counseling sessions to the parents of the aggrieved couples.
- The State is to allocate funds to be utilized by the Special Cells in order to eradicate the menace of honour killing.
- In the event of any untoward incident, the Special Cell is to fix responsibility upon the officers who failed in their duty to protect the couple.
The brutal honour killing of a girl named Vimala triggered the Court into taking stringent action against the growing evil of honour killing. The counsel for the petitioner U. Nirmala Rani presented before the list of erring officials who failed in their duty of protecting the couple. A list of 47 honour killings that took place in the State form 2011-2015 was also presented before the Court.
Perusing the facts placed before it, the Court took into consideration the decision of K. Kanan, J., of the Punjab and Haryana High Court who in the case of Manmeet Singh v. State of Haryana, 2015 SCC OnLine P&H 222, issued directives to the State Police to ensure that complaints of honour killings are looked after with sincerity and are dealt expeditiously. The laxities revealed by the petitioner in the case at hand compelled the Court to issue similar directives to the State of Tamil Nadu. [B. Dilipkumar v. The Secretary to the Government, 2016 SCC OnLine Mad 2122, decided on 13.04.2016]