Gulshama, sole sister to five brothers, was the family’s darling. He, Irshad, was the village model boy; someone who made it to Delhi from the sleepy Bulandshahr hamlet and landed a decent job. They were both 19, belonged to the same community, same caste. And somewhere along the village life, their paths crossed. They fell in love with each other.That fairytale was cut short last Wednesday when the gory medieval side of Western Uttar Pradesh chose to interfere. Gulshama and Irshad — reportedly caught meeting each other in a field at midnight — were lynched to death by a mob allegedly led by her own father and brother. Not content, they announced the killings through the village mosque loudspeaker, inviting the rest to ‘‘take part’’. Their crime: trying to break the village taboo wherein marriages from within the same village are a strict no-no. Today, while Irshad’s aged parents are still recovering from the shock, Gulshama’s family has no tears to shed. The girl’s aunt is the gram pradhan. And her husband, Aflatoon, along with Gulshama’s father Chand Khan and brother Ashraf, stand accused of the murders.‘‘Everyone was at it, busy clubbing,’’ claims Gulshama’s uncle Momin Khan Chauhan. ‘‘It was like the frenzy after a road accident when everyone starts baying for the blood of the driver who erred,’’ says Chauhan who wants the incident to serve as a lesson for generations to come.As per the Rangad Muslim Rajput community — to which both Irshad and Gulshama belonged — girls and boys cannot marry if they belong to even as far as the nearby 32 villages. ‘‘The gotra is binding,’’ says an unrepentant Chauhan.Villagers recall the incident with a shudder. It was around 10 pm when Gulshama’s family discovered that she was not at home. They started hunting for her, other villagers soon joined them. After half-an-hour, the duo was reportedly tracked down to a field behind the boy’s house. The couple was dragged to the girl’s house and clubbed to death. Putting her own twist to the tale, Irshad’s mother Jameela alleges that the girl’s family dragged her son from the house and killed him to settle old scores. ‘‘Somehow, we managed to ring up the police,’’ says Jameela. Irshad was still breathing when they managed to dispel the mob, he was taken to a hospital where he succumbed to his injuries.
