Barely 300 kilometres from New Delhi is the small albeit prosperous village of Karora in District Kaithal. Given the gruesome nature of the deaths that rocked this village three years ago, it may as well be millions of miles away from Delhi.
Chandrapati?s house has high walls, an imposing black gate, and the door is answered by a police officer who is stationed at her residence 24/7 to protect her.
This 55-year-old widow recently shot to national headlines when a court in Karnal sentenced five people to death for their involvement in the gruesome double murder of her son Manoj and daughter-in-law Babli. Having eloped and married, Manoj and Babli had broken the most sacrosanct of all Jat customs, which prohibits marriage within the same gotra. In June 2007, they were kidnapped by members of Babli?s family and murdered.
Members of Khap Panchayats across Haryana insist that the Khap did not order death for the young couple. ?The Khap did not say that they should be killed. It was a decision taken by Babli?s parents who were disgraced by the couple?s despicable act. She married her own brother. What else could her family do?? explains Om Prakash Dhankad, pradhan of the Dhankad Khap who later, by his own admission, tried to get Chandrapati to withdraw her case from court.
Dhankad believes that such young couples are out to destroy the ?bhaichaara? that Jats have cultivated over centuries. ?This is a sickness, to marry in the same gotra or the adjoining village.?
A Jat social structure that dates back to 600 AD, Khaps are community groups centred around various gotras (clans). According to Khazaan Singh, dean of social sciences at the Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Khaps were socially relevant bodies in the days before a judicial apparatus was set up in India. ?They were relied upon by rulers and were renowned for amicably settling disputes in a just and fair manner.?
Singh believes that over the last decade Khaps have emerged as oppressive groups who are struggling to come to terms with a society where they are no longer relevant. ?If you look at the individuals who occupy positions of power in Khap Panchayats today, these are generally politically ambitious men who have failed to branch out into the acceptable democratic avenues of power,? he explains.
Central to their continued existence is the strict, and often brutal, enforcement of the long-held Jat tradition that frowns upon marriage within the same gotra.
Each Khap, has under it between 12 to 360 villages. The Sarv Khap has nearly 300 Khaps, roughly 19,000 villages, under it. ?In the past, Khap leaders could make or break a politician. Even now, we do indicate which candidates we are backing,? says Ram Chander of the Dalal Khap, which has 84 villages under its banner. For any administration in Haryana to take stern action against Khap Panchayats, it is believed, would be akin to political suicide.