After Haryana's notorious khaps, self-styled village councils emerge in Bihar
Nitish Raj Village councils take the law into their own hands.
On May 24, the Talbari Sethiyara panchayat in Bihar's eastern district of Purnia forbade a 12-year-old rape survivor and her parents from filing a police complaint. Far away from Haryana's notorious khaps, similar self-styled village councils are evidently commonplace in Bihar as well. Just the past month saw three such panchayats mete out jungle justice.
The 'wise' men of Talbari Sethiyara told the rape survivor and her family that since Manik Bosak, their neighbour, had confessed to his crime, they must wait till the girl attains adulthood and marry her off to her rapist. They even ordered that Bosak promise in writing he would marry the girl.
In shock and fearing reprisals from the panchayat, the girl and her parents withdrew to their home for a fortnight before finally summoning the courage to approach the police. Purnia superintendent of police Nishant Tiwary ordered immediate registration of an FIR and arrest of the panchayat elders, who've been on the run since. "Rape and molestation are serious criminal offences which panchayats have no authority to adjudicate," Tiwary said.
On June 6, a day before the police registered the FIR in the Purnia rape case, a panchayat in Bhagalpur ordered the execution of a 26-year-old man because he had married his student. Himanshu Yadav of Gaurachauki village, who eloped and married a girl he used to tutor, was attacked with blunt weapons and shot six times after the panchayat's verdict. Yadav's mother, too, sustained gunshot wounds but survived.
The panchayat pronounced the death sentence after a local court dismissed an abduction complaint filed by the girl's father claiming his daughter was a minor. The father then approached the panchayat. Twenty one persons have been booked for Yadav's murder, but only two arrests have been made so far.
Though a majority of such questionable diktats have come from the self-appointed councils in Bihar's backwaters and not from elected panchayat members, it is equally true that even the elected rural bodies have failed to check the hegemony of the traditionally influential elements in the state's patriarchal social order.
Last week, in another bizarre instance, a panchayat in Kaimur district forced the owner of a coaching institute to marry a disabled girl simply because the two were found talking to each other.