Introduction to sociology

A woman in India, Shabnam, was sentenced to death for killing seven members of her family. She was sentenced to death while pregnant.

Shabnam and her lover, Saleem, were found guilty of the murders and sentenced to death by hanging.

If she is executed, Shabnam will be the first woman given the death penalty in India since 1955.

But with her execution looming, Shabnam’s legal team is trying to halt it — and is arguing that she is a victim, too. Lawyer Shreya Rastogi says her client, who has never admitted to the crime, is a casualty of a patriarchal society that puts caste above all else.

Aside from the people who died that night, the couple’s crime created another victim — their son, Bittu, not his real name, who Shabnam raised in prison before giving him up.

Now 12, Bittu is appealing to Indian President Ram Nath Kovind to show his mother mercy.

Shabnam and Saleem were young lovers who lived in the same village — but their families disapproved of their union.

Shabnam, who was 22 at the time of the murders, was an educated teacher from the Saifi community. Saleem, then 24, was an unemployed Pathan youth.

Although Indian castes are often associated with the Hindu community, similar social hierarchies exist among Muslim families based on their historical

occupation.

Families often pressure children to marry within their communities. Failure to do so can lead to violence and, in extreme cases, honor killings when family members are murdered for bringing alleged shame onto the family.

Before the killings, Lal Mohammad, the father of Shabnam’s deceased sister-in-law Anjum, tipped off police about the couple’s relationship.

“Shabnam is going in the wrong direction. She wants to marry Saleem, and the atmosphere at home is very tense,“ Mohammad recalled Anjum as saying, according to his witness statement at Shabnam’s 2008 district court trial.

A fellow teacher at the school where Shabnam worked testified that Shabnam had told him she wanted to marry Saleem, but her family opposed it. Sukkhan Ali, Shabnam’s cousin, said the court Saleem would often come to Shabnam’s house to meet her. Her father did not like this and beat her, he said.

But there was something Shabnam’s family didn’t know, the court heard. Shabnam was already pregnant with Saleem’s child.

In his ruling, the district court judge observed that locals “would not have been able to accept the ‘haram‘ (illegitimate) act,“ referring to their unborn child. However, the judge said the couple had other options to escape the “conservative society“ beyond murdering seven people.

It’s not clear if Shabnam knew she was eight weeks pregnant at the time of the murders.

The prosecution said she did. They argued Shabnam wanted to kill her family so she would be the sole heiress of their property and could live in comfort with Saleem and they’re newborn.

However, the Supreme Court noted in its 2015 judgment that Shabnam had “feigned unconsciousness and laid by the side of the deceased father’s mutilated body, to callously insinuate that an outsider had committed the crime.“

But her lawyer believes Shabnam has been unfairly demonized, and her death penalty should be commuted.

Instructions:

Please analyze this case by referring to the following concepts: a) ethnocentrism v cultural relativism (e.g., Should the family culture in which Shabnam lived be a mitigating factor to commute the sentence?) b) please use this case to debate the merits of the arguments in favor and against the death penalty and then apply to this case) c) discuss the caste system. What is it? How does the caste system influence the culture of the families discussed in the story? How do you explain it in terms of in-group; outgroup?

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