Chandigarh stalking case: We’re there for Varnika if she needs help, says Kundu khap

“A delegation from these villages had come to me to offer support. They had asked me what they should do. I suggested to them that there was no need to do anything,” says Kundu, who is Additional Chief Secretary (tourism) in the Haryana government. Kundu’s father Krishan Singh Kundu, a lawyer, had shifted to Chandigarh in 1967. “My father was the first graduate of our village,” said Kundu, who has two sisters.

The anger against the incident is evident in the village. “Ek taraf to Beti Bachao ka nara deve se aur dusari taraf yo hal se (They give slogan of Beti Bachao but on the other hand, this is the reality,” said Murti Devi, 55, wife of a retired Army Captain, Jagbir Singh. “To express our anger, we burnt an effigy of Subhash Barala after the stalking incident and we had warned that we would block roads if the accused were not arrested soon. It was not the fight of Kundus alone but of “36 biradaris”, said Ram Mehar Kundu, a farmer, in Shahpur village.

But the arrests have calmed tempers. Captain Jagbir Singh (retd) said, “We are satisfied that the accused have been arrested and appropriate sections of the IPC have been added against them.” In Haryana, according to the Kundu khap president, Kundus have a significant presence in more than 80 villages of Haryana, of which a few dozen are called ‘Kundu villages’.