Karnataka ‘honour’ killing: Deaths most dishonourable

IAs one of the worst crimes of the year comes to an end, 19-year-old Manya Vivekananda Doddamani was fatally attacked by her father and his supporters in Inam Veerapur village in Dharwad district in northern Karnataka on December 21, 2025. The seriously injured woman, who got married a few months ago and was pregnant, died in the hospital.

What provoked the attack was the fact that an “upper” caste woman married a “lower” caste man, thereby bringing “dishonor” to her family and clan. Manya (née Manya Patil) was a Lingayat and her decision to marry a Madiga (Scheduled Caste) man had incurred the wrath of the family.

The couple married in May despite strong opposition. The collector and police intervened and appealed to both families for a ceasefire. The police launched an investigation into the incident as a precaution. Sensing the threat, the couple moved to neighboring Haveri. But assuming the nerves calmed down, pregnant Manya and her husband returned to their hometown in December and learned in the most tragic way that they were wrong.

While Manya’s father Prakashgouda Patil and other accused are currently in custody, police are searching for others among the 15 accused. Two police personnel and a panchayat development officer were suspended for dereliction of duty. Manya’s husband and mother-in-law were also injured in the attack and are currently recovering.

Also read | Dalits protest against Hubballi’s ‘honor’ killing

While there is no separate data on “honor” killings in Karnataka for 2025, there are some widely reported cases. In August, 52-year-old Shankar Kollur from Melakunda village in Kalaburagi district was arrested for allegedly killing his 18-year-old daughter Kavita. A nursing student from the Lingayat community was in love with a Kuruba boy.

In February, the strangulation death of a 21-year-old Kuruba caste woman in Harohalli on the outskirts of Bengaluru was flagged as an “honour” killing by her boyfriend Naidu, but the police recorded it as an accident.

In January, a district court in Gadag in northern Karnataka sentenced four men to death for the murder of an inter-caste couple – Gangamma Rathod (SC ‘touchable’ SC) from the Lambani community and her husband Ramesh Madar (SC ‘Sol’) from the Madiga community in 2019. The circumstances leading to the death were similar to Manya’s. The couple got married in 2017 despite the family’s objections, and their hometown in Gadag district They had left Lakkalakatti village and returned with the mistaken belief that old wounds had been healed.

While northern states such as Haryana, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh often make headlines for “honour” killings, it is clear that “progressive” states such as Karnataka are not immune from such crimes. The People’s Union for Civil Liberties-Karnataka, in its report titled “In the Name of Honour” published in 2024, recorded 13 cases of “honor” attacks in which 12 people were killed from January-2022 to December-2023. “These killings took place in seven districts of Karnataka. Each case is a shocking reminder of the brutal lengths to which people go to oppose inter-caste and inter-faith brotherhood,” the newspaper said. “In most of the murders in 2022-23, the victim was a woman belonging to the more dominant community. The perpetrators were the men of the family.”

There have been protests by Dalit and other progressive organizations since the incident in Veerapur village earlier this month. One of their main demands is to enact a separate law to combat “honor” crimes and to call this law Manya. In the last winter session of the Legislative Assembly, Karnataka passed the Karnataka Protection of People from Social Boycott (Prevention, Prohibition and Remediation) Bill, 2025 to prevent social boycott and discrimination by caste or community panchayats.

While there are provisions in existing laws to prevent caste-related violence, it can be argued that special laws add another layer of fortification. However, as long as the concepts of caste hierarchies and caste superiority are socially accepted, such fortifications are not difficult to overcome. One of the arguments against caste research by “upper” castes in Karnataka (and also elsewhere in India) was that such a practice revived old practices that had no validity in Viksit Bharat. Manya’s death is a tragically significant testimony to the fallacy of this claim.