From Kavin to Samantha: Expanding the Scope of Understanding and Tackling Honour Crimes

On July 27, 2025, a young Dalit man named Kavin Selvaganesh, an engineer who was working at a leading IT firm in Chennai, was murdered by his girlfriend’s brother, the latest in a sequence of honour crimes perpetrated to preserve caste purity and hierarchy.

Following this dastardly crime, major political parties in the DMK-led coalition, VCK, CPI, and CPI (M), have urged the Tamil Nadu government to enact a separate law against honour-based crimes and pave the way for a democratic revolution.

Our queer communities have a stake in such a law too.

Around the same time as Kavin’s murder, a trans woman, Samatha, was brutally attacked by her brother and his friends. This led to several injuries, after which she escaped and was admitted to a government hospital with the help of her transgender peers. The motivation for this crime appears to have been Samantha’s transgender identity, perceived as a disgrace to the family honour.

Thus, honour crimes are not only targeted at heterosexual “lower-caste” persons in this country. We queer people have been subjected to endless abuses and murders in the name of honour because of our non-normative gender identities and/or sexualities, even in a self-proclaimed progressive state such as Tamil Nadu.

In 2021, the brother of a 17-year-old transgender girl murdered her in the Salem district because he did not approve of her gender identity. In the same year and same district, another trans woman named Akshitha was murdered by her mother, P. Uma Devi, on account of her gender identity.

In 2022, 26-year-old Dalit transwoman Udaya was brutally assaulted by her boyfriend’s family because she called his mother ‘atthai’ (a term used to address one’s mother-in-law). The family hurled casteist and transphobic slurs at Udaya.

Apart from honour crimes, there are also many documented – and undocumented – instances of persons who are driven to suicide by queerphobia within their families. In 2008, two women in Chennai, Christy Jayanthi Malar (38) and Rukmani (40), who had known each other since school, set themselves afire after their families tried forcibly separating them and verbally abusing them because of their relationship . In 2020, two women, Jothi (23) and Priya (20), killed themselves in Namakkal because their families had forcibly separated them. In 2023, 21-year-old Karthick of Maralimalai Nagar drowned himself after his family expressed strong disapproval of his relationship with his male partner. These may be viewed as institutional murders, where the institution is the natal family.

Concepts of family honour and reputation are evoked by family members whenever individuals try to defy the arbitrary limitations imposed by this patriarchal, casteist, transphobic, and homophobic society. Violating gender-sexuality-caste related family norms results in violence ranging from verbal, emotional and physical abuse to murder. ‘Honour’ is the weapon they use to subjugate us.

Intersectional Solidarity against Honour Crimes

In 2022, Kathir, a well-known activist and founder-director of the Evidence organization, met Tamil Nadu Chief Minister and submitted a draft bill titled ‘The Freedom of Marriage and Association and Prohibition of Crimes in the Name of Honour Bill 2022,’ which aims to end honour killings. This bill, drafted by the Dalit Human Rights Defenders Network, has extensive provisions about the forms of victimization, the type of compensation, and monitoring mechanisms.

The bill seeks to “provide justice, compensation, and rehabilitation in crimes committed in the name of honour vis-a-vis caste, faith, age, gender, sexual orientation, language, class, race, status, and tradition.” Thus, the bill, if it were to be enacted, has scope for substantive justice for our communities, which face gender- and sexual orientation-based honour crimes and honour killings. The bill has extensive examples that can be considered as criminal victimization in the name of dishonour: ostracization or forced eviction of couples from their area of residence; abduction of one of the partners or anyone known to them; and imposing a social or economic boycott on the couple or their families, etc. There are provisions for fast-track courts to try offenses outlined under this bill. The full text of the bill may be viewed here.

The Way Forward

If such a proposed bill were to be passed in Tamil Nadu, it would be the first of its kind in the country and set a huge precedent for other states and centers to follow through. This cannot happen without broader social and political support.

VCK leader Thol. Thirumavalavan is at the forefront of advocating such a bill, and he’s been pushing for the same in the larger political circles. After his regret for the recent hurtful comments he made, he vowed to ‘always support the LGBTQ+ community’ and asserted that the party would always be one that raises its voice for the rights of the marginalized, including those of the LGBTQ+ community. A Resolution to Ensure Equal Rights and Dignity for LGBTQI+ Individuals was adopted by the 24th Party Congress of CPI(M) and even promised support for legislation to formally recognize same-sex unions and provide them adequate protections and adoption of gender-neutral policies across sectors.

The Supreme Court has given 20 guidelines in the Shakti Vahini vs. Union of India case on March 27, 2018, to prevent honour killings, and one such guideline instructs states to implement a special act against honour killings, and so our Tamil Nadu government is obliged to enact such an Act. The sooner it acts, the better.
It is time our civil society organizations and we as a community lend the social support required, remind these political parties of their promises and thus seek broader support for ‘The Freedom of Marriage and Association and Prohibition of Crimes in the Name of Honour Bill 2022.’ This is a stellar opportunity for progressive individuals and every minority community in Tamil Nadu to come together and express solidarity in something that everyone of us has a stake in. Let Kavin’s death and the attack on Samantha not go in vain. Only such a legislative revolution can provide consolation to us, and so it’s high time for us to make some noise.