This Article is From Jul 07, 2010

Another khap diktat forces couple into hiding

Greater Noida: "Kill them if you see them" - this is the latest diktat of a khap panchayat in a village in Greater Noida, just outside Delhi.

Their target - a couple in their mid twenties - their love flouted caste boundaries prescribed by village elders and saw a Dalit boy eloping with a Brahmin girl.

Sanjay and Preeti studied in the same school and lived in adjoining villages. Today they are running for their lives.

The girl's village, predominantly Brahmin, is furious and has issued shoot at sight orders.

"They have threatened us," said Father of Sanjay.

And the threats are not restricted to the families, the boy's Dalit village is now living in fear.

"There is fear in the village, we have sent our women out of the village, they said they will pick up our women, we should send our women till their daughter returns," said a villager.

Despite heavy police security, the residents of this Dalit village fear what the more influential Brahmins might do. On the other hand they say what Sanjay and Preeti have done is socially unacceptable.

"In our society, the girl of the next village is our daughter, it is wrong," said a man from Brahmin village.

The police has promised protection but there's no action yet against the killer khap.

"The two have attained the legal age and the news is that they have gotten married. We are in search of them so that we can protect them. They have not committed any crime," said Greater Noida SP, Surendra Kumar Verma.

The Brahmin-Dalit alliance may have got Mayawati to power, but there seems to be no meeting point on the ground.
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