Dalit ‘lovers’ roughed up,exiled from Muzaffarnagar village

The police are now looking for the panchayat members who have gone into a hiding. Most of the panchayat members were from Jat community,police said.

“We have taken a serious note of the matter and a team from Kandhla police station raided the village on Thursday,” said Superintendent of Police (Rural) Raju Babu Singh.

Singh said the panchayat was called after someone complained that a widow was having an affair with a youth and she was pregnant. The panchayat members summoned the youth,identified as Sanjivan,who confessed to having relation with the woman.

The police came to know about the incident on Wednesday but they had to face a tough time in gathering information as not a single villager was willing to speak about the incident. Only when they threatened to take action against them,some of the villagers narrated the incident.

Both the man and the woman are in their thirties. While Sanjivan lived alone,the woman’s stayed with her parents. They too have fled the village after the incident. “The couple is untraceable and there was nobody to lodge an FIR against the members of the panchayat. The police will provide security to the couple so that they can live at their place,” said Singh.