Haryana’s two worlds, 60 km apart

Six women from both sides of the family were acquitted of the charges. The girl’s side was charged with Desraj’s murder and the boy’s family with Nirmala’s. The houses of both families are now inhabited only by women.

There is a sullen anger in the village that the incident should haunt them even today. This anger suddenly gives way to belligerence, and villagers say that the two lovers were in the wrong anyway.

They insist that strong action should be taken against such runaways but agree that death was, perhaps, an extreme punishment. ‘‘They were of the same gotra…Such marriages can’t happen. In such cases, both the girl and boy should be punished,’’ said Chandra, Desraj’s sister-in-law.

Here a boy who dares to elope with a girl still faces stringent punishment once found and brought back. Women walk around the village with their faces covered and their movement is restricted even within the village.

At the Kalayat police station, policemen say the sentence has taught the villagers a lesson. ‘‘This is a strong message. All the accused were out on bail but now they are back in jail. The villagers at least know that you can’t take the law into their hands and get away with it,’’ said S-I Siltan Singh.

Former sarpanch of the village Mangad Ram admitted that villagers didn’t see anything wrong with what happened. ‘‘Nothing has changed. Villagers still think the right thing happened,’’ he said. The sense of outrage that the two — who by village customs were ‘‘like brother and sister’’ — eloped is still strong within the community.

On March, 27, 1999 Desraj and Nirmala had run away and were found in a nearby village the next day. They were brought to Kalayat where a panchayat was called and a decision to banish Desraj for five years from the village taken. Defying the order, Desraj returned. Nirmala’s father, Dharampal, called a local panchayat.

According to the complaint filed by Desraj’s brother, Inder Singh (who is also in jail), during the panchayat they heard people shouting ‘‘mar dalo’’ (kill them).

They ran and found the girl’s brothers and relatives beating Desraj with lathis. They beat him to death. The complaint says that the same group killed Nirmala too. The bodies were cremated side by side.

A police case was lodged on this complaint by Inder Singh but later Nirmala’s mother, Anghahi, filed another complaint in which she said the girl had been killed by Desraj’s relatives. The court decided that both sides were guilty.

After the police case and court action, the villagers are scared to talk about the incident. Their loyalties are also divided between the two families, according to the police. The two sides, according to the police, tried to reconcile but failed.

Desraj’s mother, Reshma, who was acquitted of the charges, says their side is innocent. ‘‘All the villagers just watched. Nobody tried to stop the killing,’’ she said. The families now plan to appeal against the decision.

In Karnal village, it took girl power to foil child marriage

Manraj Grewal

Karnal, April 2: And just about 60 km from Kaithal, the dusty old village of Harsinghpura had its first taste of women power last Saturday when five of its Class VIII schoolgirls joined hands to thwart the marriage of two minors to men much older.

When Bhopal Singh, an impoverished gadariya, decided to clear his mounting debts by marrying off his daughters — Suman, 12, and Pushpa, 6 — to brothers in their twenties for a tidy sum, little did he know that a bunch of feisty girls would not only foil his plans but also land him in jail.

Today, four days after the incident, the village continues to seethe. A bolted door greets you at Bhopal’s house — a nylon rope in place of the lock telling a tale of his poverty — but there’s no dearth of people to tell you about him or his wife, the long-suffering Krishna who’s borne him eight daughters of whom only four survived in the past 12 years.

The hush-hush baraat of Dharampal and Rajpal, the two brothers, arrived after most villagers had left for the fields, says Gyani Ram, a neighbour. ‘‘They didn’t invite anyone, and the baraatis even got a pandit of their own.’’ Though taken aback, Gyani would have desisted from intervening had it not been for the alarm raised by Sarita Tyagi, a Class VIII student of Sanskar Bharti School. The girl and her four friends first called up the police and then sought the help of Nanuram, a former sarpanch working in a field nearby.

The pandit had just begun the ceremony when the girls barged in. ‘‘They said, ‘tum to makkhi ho, kya karogi’,’’ recalls Sushma Rani, Sarita’s classmate and a wannabe policewoman. The baraatis stood their ground. ‘‘One Rana told us we couldn’t stop the ceremony for they had paid Rs 50,000,’’ says Gyani Ram.

But by then, even Bhopal’s wife and his elder brother, Sewa Ram, who too was not invited, had joined the chorus of protest. Outnumbered, the baraatis fled.

The police did arrive but late in the evening and that too to arrest Sewa Ram for obstructing the marriage. ‘‘It was only after an ex-sarpanch showed them the would-be brides that they relented,’’ says Deepak, the lambardar.

Now, the girls, along with their mother and two sisters, have taken shelter with their grandmother at Kohand village Sitting on a charpoy in her hut, the wizened old Aasi Devi blames it all on her son-in-law, Bhopal Singh. ‘‘That swine did not confide in my daughter,’’ she rages. There are others, more sympathetic to him. ‘‘He’s a simpleton, can’t even count properly.’’

The girls shuffle around, eyes downcast, clearly uncomfortable with so much attention. ‘‘He only told us about the wedding early that morning,’’ is all that Suman offers. Ask for their mother and they tell you she is at the fields. ‘‘She has to feed them, doesn’t she?’’ Aasi Devi shoots down any more queries.

The others are more forthcomung. ‘‘If only the boys were younger…’’ a neighbour pitches in.

The age of the two grooms is a mystery — while villagers at Harisinghpura peg it around 30, the SHO at Gharaunda, Shamsher Singh, claims they are both under 20.

‘‘The media is just blowing up the incident, we’ll sort it out by this evening,’’ he says, adding that they’ve booked Bhopal and the two would-be grooms under Child Marriage Restraint Act.

Outside his office, Subhash Sharma, a zila parishad member, is at pains to acquaint you with the customs of the gadariya community. ‘‘They often marry their daughters young but send them to the husband’s home only after puberty.’’

This argument finds an echo at Sagga village, home to the two grooms in trouble. ‘‘We’ve been conned, we agreed to the marriage in good faith,’’ their mother, Sundari Devi, wipes her eyes, distraught at the early-morning visit by the police to pick up her two sons.

Harpal Sharma, a neighbour, agrees that money did change hands. ‘‘They must have spent around a lakh, I don’t know the details…,’’ he murmurs. One thing that he and the other villagers are sure of is the age of the boys.

‘‘They are in their twenties, not 40s as reported in a local paper,’’ bristles Sarma as Sundari fishes out their photos to prove the point. And no, they don’t find anything wrong in marrying them to girls as young as 12 and six. ‘‘It happened to all of us, why make a fuss,’’ asks the toothless Moonga Ram. Well, he could ask the Harisinghpura girls.