L ing honor

SUDHIR KUMAR MISHRA

Ranchi, March 31: NH-98, Jharkhand‘s grisly real-life nod to NH-10, the Anushka Sharma-starrer on honour killings.

A young married couple and the boy’s mother were dragged out of home in a forest village in rebel stronghold Palamau last night, their bludgeoned bodies found in bushes this morning, the police calling the triple murders the outcome of an inter-caste marriage.

Away from the blitz of publicity around NH-10, the film on PATRIARCHAL killing in Haryana, Palamau’s Patan police station area seems to have witnessed a real-life version of the tragedy in the wake of a 25-year-old Dalit youth marrying a 20-year-old OBC girl.

The bodies of the couple and the boy’s mother were found 10km from NH-98 linking Daltonganj with Patna.

“Prima facie, it appears to be a case of PATRIARCHAL killing. We have sent the bodies for post-mortem and begun probe,” said Palamau SP M.K. Patel.

Trouble started brewing some years ago when an educated Dalit youth Chunmun Kumar, a private tutor, fell in love with Sakshi Kumari, one of his students. As the girl was from the Vishwakarma community of the OBC category, their relationship triggered a furore in Nageshwar village in Patan thana area in Palamau.

Their problems escalated last year, when Chunmun and Sakshi defied social disapproval to marry in a Jammu court and then returned to live with Chunmun’s parents.

Last night, a group of people went up to Chunmun’s house and ordered him, Sakshi, his mother Phul Kumari Devi and father Rajmani Mochi to come out for “talks” at the “Maoist Jan Adalat” or a kangaroo court ostensibly run by rebel leaders.

An apprehensive Mochi refused. But, people managed to grab Chunmun, Sakshi and Devi. Scared at the mention of Maoist Jan Adalat, other villagers did not protest.

Mochi hid the night in the forest.

This morning, he found the bodies. Of the eight named as accused, one Manoj Vishwakarma is learnt to have been arrested.

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