Filling The Void: Caste-Based Honour Killings And The Missed Opportunity Of The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 - A Study Of The Legislative Gap In India's Response To Honour Killings
- IJLLR Journal
- Aug 16
- 1 min read
Raghav Sivakumar, Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, Chennai
ABSTRACT
Honour killings, one of the most enduring and violent expressions of caste and community control over individual choice, continue to occur across India with disturbing regularity, yet Indian criminal law contains no offence that names them as such. This paper examines the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, which replaced the Indian Penal Code from 1 July 2024, and argues that its drafters missed a genuine opportunity to close this gap. While Section 103(2) BNS introduces a new offence of murder by a group of five or more persons on grounds including caste popularly understood as India's answer to mob lynching the provision does not extend to the far more common pattern of honour killings committed by one, two, or three family members acting alone. Such killings continue to be prosecuted as ordinary murder under Section 103(1) BNS, with the caste or honour motive treated, at best, as an aggravating fact for sentencing rather than a defining element of the offence. This paper traces the legislative history of India's failed attempts to enact a standalone law, examines the Supreme Court's guideline- based intervention in Shakti Vahini v. Union of India (2018), and draws a comparative lesson from Pakistan's Criminal Law (Amendment) Act, 2016. It concludes with a narrow, targeted legislative recommendation for closing the gap left open by the BNS.
