Even though the police have declared her dead, Abhishek Seth believes there is one per cent chance that she may return to him. “Her maama [uncle] is still absconding, maybe they didn’t kill her and have just hid her somewhere,” he says.

Sitting with his mother in their tiny apartment near west Delhi’s Uttam Nagar, Abhishek appears a lot frailer when you compare him to the pictures that were splashed across newspapers with the news of his wife Bhawna Yadav’s murder.

The duo had known each other since August 2012 and eloped earlier this month on November 12. “We decided to get married on my birthday at the Arya Samaj Temple in Connaught Place since her parents were getting her engaged to another man,” he says.

For about a month, Bhawna would pack a few of her clothes in her bag to stash at Abhishek’s house. The idea was to not get her parents suspicious about her plans to leave home once and for all and marry the man she had chosen, keeping aside considerations of caste and community. She was a 21-year-old third-year student at Delhi University’s Sri Venkateswara College and he is a 24-year-old assistant programmer at the Cabinet Secretariat in Rashtrapati Bhavan.

On the night they got married, Bhawna’s parents came over to Abhishek’s house to take her back. The couple had called up Bhawna’s parents to tell them about their marriage on Abhishek’s mother’s insistence. “They said they accepted the marriage and that I could come to their house and take her back as my wife after a proper ceremony. We agreed,” says Abhishek.

Bhawna, however, returned to Abhishek’s house once again on November 13, following constant pressure from her parents to forget about her ties with Abhishek. But her parents came after her again and said they’d keep their word. “They assured me again that they would get us married in a proper ceremony. So, I let her go back to their house,” he says. That was the last time he saw Bhawna.

According to Deputy Commissioner of Police (Dwarka North) Suman Goyal, Bhawna’s parents have confessed to murdering their daughter by strangling her and then cremating her body in their hometown of Alwar in Rajasthan. The judicial confession, however, is yet to take place and Goyal says the police is questioning Bhawna’s uncle to investigate his role in the murder. The police has not been forthcoming about the uncle’s details, says Abhishek — which is perhaps why he believes he is in hiding.

“I thought the maximum they’d do is break all ties with us. Bhawna always told me how much her father [property dealer and Congress party worker] loved her, I still can’t believe they can go to this extent,” says Abhishek. Bhawna’s friend, who has known her since school, says she had warned her against going back to her home after marrying Abhishek. “Once in a conversation about an acquaintance who had married outside the community, her parents had said they’d kill Bhawna if she ever did anything like that. I had warned her against going back home,” she says, not willing to be named.

Around the same time as Bhawna’s murder, news of two young men being stripped and beaten for being witnesses at a friend’s wedding came to light. The incident occurred in Maharashtra on November 2, but was reported by local TV news channels on November 14.

The man beating the boy has been identified as Suresh Gatige, a close aide of Bharatiya Janata Party Member of Legislative Assembly (MLA) Satish Sanjay Patil. Gatige is seen assaulting the boys to teach them a lesson for supporting their friend who married the MLA’s niece.

On November 26, the papers reported another possible case of an “honour” crime in which a young Muslim girl was shot dead by her brother in Meerut.

The National Crime Recording Bureau has no record or data on the number of honour crimes committed each year since most such cases are registered under murder, personal enmity, domestic violence and kidnapping. But according to Honour Based Violence Awareness Network, of the 5,000 honour killings recorded every year internationally, 1000 occur in India.

Activists with organisations working to raise awareness on honour crimes will testify that they receive twice the number of cases every year. Yet no laws against honour killing exist in India and successive governments have moved slowly to legislate on a Bill that deals with honour crimes.

The United Progressive Alliance had proposed The Prevention of Crimes in the Name of ‘Honour’ & Tradition Bill in 2010 but it met with stiff resistance from the political class and never came through. Predictably, Khaps in Uttar Pradesh and Haryana vehemently opposed the Bill and politicians banking on them for electoral gains made every attempt to scuttle it. Amendments to the Indian Penal Code were instead proposed to include honour killing in the section defining murder. That did not happen either.

The law commission had again proposed a new Prohibition of Interference with the Freedom of Matrimonial Alliances Bill in 2012. The recommended Bill aims to keep a “check on the high-handed and unwarranted interference by the caste assemblies or panchayats with sagotra, inter-caste or inter-religious marriages, which are otherwise lawful… .”  It also recommends a “threshold bar against the congregation or assembly for the purpose of disapproving such marriage/intended marriages and the conduct of the young couple… .” Such assemblies encouraging the criminal intimidation of couples can, according to the Bill, attract an imprisonment of up to one year and be liable to a fine of up Rs 30,000.

The Bill also proposes to make honour crimes cognisable, non-bailable and non-compoundable.

In a watershed moment, the Bill has finally received a mandate from 21 states and Union Territories and there is hope for the current government to finally make it a law. For the likes of Abhishek and countless such couples who pay the price for marrying outside their communities, this should be encouraging news. Meanwhile, it will indeed be a long fight for justice, considering there have been few convictions even in the most high-profile honour crimes.

In 2010, Nirupama Pathak, a 23-year-old scribe with Business Standard, was found murdered in her hometown in Jharkhand in an alleged case of honour killing. Her boyfriend, Priyabhanshu Ranjan, says the case is still stuck in the lower court of Jharkhand and the police are yet to chargesheet Nirupama’s mother, father and brother. “They have filed a chargesheet, but only against me,” he says, adding that he has little hope of a Bill making any difference. “A change in the mentality is the only solution,” he says. While that may take ages, stricter laws can nevertheless go a long way in making life easy for young couples who dare to fall in love.