Jhajjar (Haryana), July 19 (Inditop.com) Haryana’s ‘khap’ (caste) councils, notorious for their vicious campaign against couples getting married within the same clan, are at it again. A khap council that has been hounding a married couple for the past month, Sunday attacked police for trying to prevent them from evicting the husband’s family from the village.
Tension prevailed in Dharana village in Jhajjar district Sunday after residents clashed with police when the latter tried to prevent them from evicting the family of Ravinder Singh, 24, for having married a girl belonging to the same Kadiyan gotra.
The panchayat had Friday ordered Singh to annul his marriage or leave the village by Sunday. Driven to despair after the village panchayat’s decision, Ravinder Singh attempted suicide Friday by consuming poison.
The villagers are bitterly against the marriage of Ravinder with Shilpa and want him to take a divorce. The panchayat has boycotted his family and threatened to impose a hefty fine on anyone speaking with the family.
On Thursday, representatives from Ravinder’s village even went to Shilpa’s village Siwah near Panipat town to persuade her family for a mutual divorce.
Ravinder, who works in Delhi with a transport company, married Shilpa about four months back.
On Sunday the police stepped in to stop the villagers from evicting Ravinder’s family. The villagers pelted police with stones and bricks. In retaliation, the police fired tear-gas shells to disperse the crowd.
There were rumours that police had opened fire at the villagers in the evening and nearly half a dozen people were injured.
However, district police chief Saurabh Singh denied that the police had opened fire.
“There has been no incident of police firing. Heavy police force has been deployed in the village to prevent any untoward incident,” he told IANS.
Singh said, “The members of the panchayat and some others had a meeting in another village in the morning and were marching towards the house of Ravinder.”
“We tried to stop them at the border of Dharana village but they suddenly attacked the police. We had to use force to control the agitating mob. So far, we have not arrested anybody, but in the process some of our policemen sustained serious injuries,” he added.
“We are trying to resolve this issue. Nobody is above law and we will not allow them to take the law into their own hands,” said Singh.
When villagers approached Shilpa’s family Thursday for a divorce, they declined.
Lalchand, grandfather of the girl, said: “We are totally against this divorce as it would destroy our daughter’s life. The groom’s family was well aware about our gotra before the marriage and we had not kept anybody in the dark (about it). Rather they should try and convince their panchayat.”
A relative of Ravinder said: “Police should immediately arrest the culprits. Everyone knows their identity but they are moving about freely in the village. Police are working under political pressure and it seems that they themselves are afraid of the panchayat.”
In recent years, some couples who went against the wishes of Khap councils were driven out of villages, attacked and in some cases even killed by villagers at the behest of these councils.
