My duty is to ensure that laws adopted by Parliament are obeyed and enforced.

“Whoever is the cause of the crime, an individual or a collective, must be punished. My duty is to ensure that laws adopted by Parliament are obeyed and enforced. Once the law is made, it must be enforced. Those involved must be punished,” 

Without directly naming the Khap panchayat’s (village councils) that generally approve honour killings, the Union minister said the proposed law would define honour killings and take within its sweep cases of forcing women to strip in public and expelling people from villages.

“Acts which are humiliating will be punished with severity.”

He added that such cases bring ‘dishonour to the families, the community and the country’.

Mostly village councils in rural India, particularly in northern states, award death sentence to couples or even their entire families in they go for same caste or clan marriages.

A Group of Ministers (GoM0 has already been set up by the Cabinet to consider a draft bill.

“I am confident that the GoM will give its report shortly and my intention is to introduce the bill in this session itself,” Chidambaram said.

Whether the new law would be a stand-alone one or would the Indian Penal Code or the Criminal Procedure Code be amended would be debated by the Union Cabinet, he added.

Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar, expressing concern at the growing menace of honour killings, said, “It is a dehumanising process and we have to take it very seriously.”