Sonipat: Years after three relatives were murdered for an intercaste marriage, one man seeks justice
In the seventh decade of the Indian republic and the second decade of the 21st century, one of the most dangerous things that a young person in India can do is to choose to marry outside the caste into which they were born. Blood can flow, bodies can pile high.
I tell here one such story, from a small town in Sonipat district in Haryana, a couple of hours drive from the capital city of Delhi.
Deepak Kumar, born into a Dalit caste in Haryana, had to drop out from school as a young child. His wife, Sita Devi, was completely unlettered. Their caste was one which traditionally worked with wood. Deepak Kumar rose above it, building up a modest wood business, even employing a few workers. He was determined that his children should study right up to college and beyond, so worlds would open up to them which to him and generations before him had been blocked.
His eldest boy Vivek Kumar was bright, and left home to study history in a private college in Rohtak’s Maharishi Dayanand University. His father could not carry the burden of his...
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