Recently, there was an honor killing case in Haryana wherein the family of a girl killed their daughter, in which their parents and brother were involved, her brother had married against his parents’ wishes but the girl supported him and his wife but brother didn’t think of this before killing his own sister who had supported him when he had nowhere to go.
This brings us to the crude mentality of our society in which males wish that they should have a girlfriend but their sister shouldn’t have any boyfriend, this is because of deep-rooted patriarchy in their minds where the girl is property wherein if the boy has a girlfriend then he has got a property and if his sister goes into a relationship then he sees it as his property gone to some other person. And they don’t want. However, there’s another pinch to the story which makes every boy try to save his sister, as boys know themselves and their friends and their surroundings where girls are just objectified, so to protect their sisters they have to become protective because no one knows what may happen with their girl and what type of boyfriend she may get.
Another thing in the case is that both were together for 7 years and at the time of the death the girl was 22 and the boy was 28. Now if we calculate when both had met, at that time the girl was just 15 means she had got her puberty. We know that, at this age when puberty is attained, changes in the body make us very curious and hormones also develop, and when we see our surroundings where we get lots of movies, songs, etc. on the name of love( it should be called lust) then the child wants to feel all this pleasure too. And as she had attained puberty she had got the feelings.
Now come to the boy, he was 21 years old which means he was mature enough to see what was going on, and as he said he was working in a music shop we can assume that he was not very educated, in Gurugram he worked as a bouncer which strengthens our claim. When the girl approached him, his primary duty was to tell the girl that it’s your age to get educated, and it’s just a chemical secretion nothing else, but did he tell? No, because he wanted it. Instead of teaching the girl of such a tender age about how the hormones do this, he exploited the situation in his favor and finally got married when she turned 22.
Without going into the nitty-gritty of the case much, we have to understand that we can’t let young children of such tender age get exploited by any adult like this, we are talking about lowering the age of consent but in this law, we have to make sure that this lowering age doesn’t lead to their exploitation, a child may be forced into prostitution in a way which looks genuine, eg. , a man of say 50 years having a relationship with a girl of 14 years or vice versa, there’s every possibility that it may happen.
I have got some cases wherein this is the case wherein a boy is fully adult but the girl doesn’t know much but tries to know and she’s not even 18.
So in the POCSO Act, we have to give some justified criteria where both are not tried for sexual assault. Justified criteria may be like the age difference, say, if one partner is 14 then the other should not be more than 18 or something so that it doesn’t lead to the exploitation of the child because the ultimate objective of the POCSO Act is to protect the child.
At the same time, sex education should be compulsory in schools.
We have to condemn this act of Honor killing along with being friends with your child so that they are aware of what path they are choosing, as we can’t let a person who can’t even choose clothes for them choose their partner at such a young age. Let them take their decisions but guide them wherever necessary.
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