How they prevented another Jhajjar

The story didn’t even start in Chamrana village but in the neighbouring Mandi village, where one Pandit Haridas saw a dead calf in his water tank on Sunday morning. He summoned three youths belonging to the Dalit Khatik tribe and asked them to pull the calf out of the water. The body was thrown outside his field, which borders Chamrana.

Sniffing the opportunity to make some extra money, the Dalits, who earn their livelihood selling the skins and bones of dead animals, started skinning the calf. They were spotted by Chamrana’s villagers, who started slapping and kicking them.

An anonymous phone call went out to the nearest police station at Israna a couple of kilometres away. The Jhajjar lynching and its repercussions fresh on their mind, Israna’s SHO, SP Mamta Singh and DSP Kuldip Singh rushed to Chamrana.

The Haryana speaker and Revenue Minister Satbir Singh Kadian, who is also the local MLA and who happened to be in Panipat on Sunday, also reached there.

A police van was immediately parked in the village. The first thing the police did was remove the half-skinned body of the calf. Haridas was also whisked away. ‘‘We immediately took the three Dalits in custody and took them along with the calf’s body to the police headquarters in Panipat,’’ said Mamta Singh.

An impromptu panchayat was held in the Israna police station courtyard, attended by 50 people from both Mandi and Chamrana. ‘‘We used the carrot and stick policy. We said that if the youth were at fault for skinning the cow, the villagers too had broken the law by beating them up,’’ said Mamta Singh.

Added Surjit Singh, the husband of sarpach Kitabo Devi, ‘‘After all, these poor people need to make a living too. If they saw a dead cow, it’s obvious that they would skin it.’’ The villagers agreed not to file an FIR against the Dalits, and both sides drew the curtain on the seven-hour drama by digging a pit together and burying the half-skinned body of the calf in it.