New Delhi: An eerie silence grips Bajehda Khurd, a dusty, sleepy and non-descript hamlet located near New Delhi-Lucknow highway, 50km from India's national capital.
The village has been under round-the-clock watch since a khap panchayat, the local governance body in the village, ordered the killing of two teenage lovers — Jasveer and Rekha — who dared to elope from the village.
The panchayat is a congregation of elderly people of a particular clan within a caste from more than 20 villages.
Though it was supposed to discuss a power project that Reliance Energy was supposed to set up on the agricultural land of the villagers, alarm bells rang when a member of the body declared that Jasveer and Rekha deserved to be murdered.
Police in Ghaziabad, a district in Uttar Pradesh State, which adjoins New Delhi in the east, immediately took note of the panchayat member's intent and deployed a team in the village.
Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ghaziabad Raghubir Lal warned the khap against taking law into its hands.
The stern posturing of the police had a calming effect on the villagers and avoided a repeat of a double-murder that shook Karnal, a district in Haryana State on New Delhi-Chandigarh highway, two years ago.
Manoj and Babli, young lovers in a village in Karnal, were abducted and killed mercilessly on the orders of a khap panchayat. Their fault was that they belonged to the same village and caste (both were Jats) and had a common surname (Banwala) and yet listened to their hearts.
Death sentences and life jail terms were meted out by a court in Karnal this March to the five people behind this ghastly crime.
In Bajehda Khurd, Jasveer and Rekha, children of Rajput (a warrior caste) families, were apparently in love. While Jasveer (17) was studying in senior secondary in Pilkhua, a town close to the village, Rekha was awaiting the results of her Grade 9 examinations.
The lovebirds fled the village on a motorbike about a week back. When the khap panchayat congregated, they were still at large.
Rekha, however, has since returned. The boy is still in hiding.
Playing it down
The police pressure has worked in the village. Now every other villager, including the families of the two lovebirds, are playing down the incident.
"My daughter did not elope. She only went to the farms and came back on the same day. Certain bad elements from the village have tried to tarnish our image," said Rekha's father Jagram, a farmer.
Jasveer's uncle Vikram Singh Sisodia does not deny the incident but stresses that there was never an order to kill the teenagers.
"Forget about killing, we've not even reprimanded our ward. The girl's family has also not punished her."
The Ghaziabad police's no-nonsense approach, the Karnal court verdict and tough talk by the government of India (Union Home Minister P. Chidambaram and Law Minister Veerappa Moily have come down heavily on khaps) seems to have drilled some sense into khap panchayats in Haryana as well as Western Uttar Pradesh — regions notorious for honour killings.
Gone is the aggressive posturing of panchayat members.
"Some of our members justified honour killings. They did it out of anger. We're strictly against such killings," claimed Santosh Dahiya, a lecturer at Kurukshetra University and president of the female wing of Sarvkhap (all caste) panchayat.
"We only want an amendment in [the] Hindu Marriage Act to disallow same gotra [clans sharing a common surname] marriages. We are not even against inter-caste marriages."
The Sarvkhap panchayat has decided to hold a sit-in in Meham village, in Rohtak district, Haryana, to press for its demand.
The last meeting of the Sarvkhap announced a boycott of such Members of Parliament and Legislative Assemblies who would not support its demand.
"I've sought meetings with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress President Sonia Gandhi to discuss our demand. For us gotra is blood," said Mewa Singh Mor Chhatar, the president of Sarvkhap.
Toothless
Dahiya's soft stance is surprising as khap panchayats have been responsible for creating chaos and mayhem in society and personal relationships over the last few years.
They have ordered the separation of several couples on the ground that the husband and wife belonged to sisterly clans, instigated the murder of lovers and ordered the expulsion of families which did not abide by their dictates.
When reminded that a khap panchayat annulled the marriage of Rampal and Sonia (a married couple in a village near Sampla, a town 60km from New Delhi) in 2005 even though the two did not belong to same gotra, Dahiya said it was a wrong decision.
The Sarvkhap, however, is in no position to take action against the guilty khap as each khap is independent of the other.
According to Chhattar, there are over 110 khaps and tappas (the smaller version of the khap) in Haryana alone. He said the Sarvkhap was in process of counting the khaps in Western Uttar Pradesh.
The Sarvkhap has no control over a khap, tappa or a village panchayat. At the most it can criticise these bodies for making a decision it deems wrong. This is what is creating mayhem in Haryana and Western Uttar Pradesh. Thus one hears of the murders of girls and lovers in the name of honour and the harassment of couples in the name of gotras almost every other day.
At times, it even extends to Muslim community which does not believe in gotras. Ikhlas, a Haryana-based policeman, found out the hard way last month. Ikhlas married Anjum, a girl from Alwar in Rajasthan state.
However, he was asked to dissolve his marriage by a khap in Tauru, a town in Gurgaon, because he and his wife belonged to same gotra. Ikhlas has since been awarded protection by a court.
This is what caused the murder of 21-year-old Ravinder, a youth in Narwana, Haryana State, who had married Sonia (18), a girl from his clan. Ravinder was beaten to death in July last year when he went to his in-laws' village to fetch his wife on orders of a court and with police protection.
Dahiya claims that same gotra marriages could cause genetic problems as members of such a clan share common genes. She said the offspring of such marriages could be left susceptible to conditions such as haemophilia and diabetes.
Dahiya ruled out a rethink on marriages within the same gotras and villages and said couples who defied this ban would not be allowed to enter the village.
Loosely structured
She blamed panchayats and fake gatherings for bringing khap Panchayats into disrepute. Since khaps are loosely structured, have no internal democracy and follow no written rules, anybody and everybody can claim to be a khap member.
Gangaraj, convicted in the murder of Manoj and Babli, claimed to be member of the khap but Dahiya denies it. She, however, admitted that she did not have the proof as she claimed that khaps did not maintain records of their membership and were simply made up of the respected village elders.
