Prem Raj is a man standing trial for kidnapping a girl and compelling her to marry him. But this 26-year-old resident of Rana Pratap Bagh in North-West Delhi says the crime he committed was to elope with his upper-caste lover and then marry her. While the past one year was marked by tribulations of fleeing from the law, surrendering and subsequent judicial remand, and then doing endless rounds of courts, the road ahead is littered with still harder choices.
Sitting in his cramped one-room tenement, 10-foot-long and not even 6-foot-wide, Prem detachedly recalls his three-year-long courtship and their elopement to Haridwar in February 2011, where they stayed for over a month. They married at an Arya Samaj Mandir near his home, and even sent the wedding photographs to the police, but the policemen and the girl's family relentlessly piled on the pressure. Unnerved by the physical and mental devastation wrought on his widowed mother, the lovers surrendered on March 16.
Prem never saw her again. But in a cruel twist of fate, the bewildering ways of the law which snatched his wife away earlier will bring him face-to-face with her again, but only in court, where he stands accused of the charge of kidnapping and forcing her to marry him.
The State vs Prem Raj case is now at the stage of recording evidence of prosecution witnesses. Over five witnesses had been examined, when Additional Sessions judge Kamini Lau summoned Kaushal Singh and his daughter, this past week, to depose as witnesses against Prem. Neither turned up, forcing the court to issue a warrant against Singh besides directing the police to recover the girl. She had been lodged at a Children's Home for Girls (for nearly a month according to Prem) but was released to the father's custody by a Child Welfare Committee under circumstances that are yet to become clear.
While the Bharat Nagar police filed a charge sheet in the case, another Delhi court had framed charges against Prem for kidnapping and compelling the girl to marry him, despite the existence of evidence on record that suggests another view of the matter. An ossification (bone) test estimated that her age was between 18 and 19 years though her father claimed she was only 15. The girl's own statement recorded before a magistrate under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code said she was 20, had eloped and married Prem on her own free will. And that she was forced to take this step, because her father wanted to sell her.
The scenario ahead troubles Prem no end. “I am still in love with her. But is she alive? If she is, will she overcome pressure from her family and accept me? How will she testify in court? I am hearing rumours that she has been married off, but I am willing to take her back as my wife if she agrees. But if she is pregnant or has a child, I cannot accept her. The child belongs to another family,” he says.
With distaste, he rues the caste system that has also worked against him. He is a Koli, who are classified as Scheduled Castes in Uttar Pradesh, while the girl belongs to the Thakur caste.
His mother, Bhudevi, works as a domestic help in the neighbourhood and has run up huge expenses and debt fighting his court case. Though, she staunchly defends her son, the drama also saw a tragic act of disownment. Wracked by threats from all sides, the distraught mother published an advertisement in a Hindi newspaper in English on February 14, 2011, the day the FIR against her son was lodged. “Bhudevi,” the ad said, “has disowned her son, Prem Raj, from all her movable and immovable properties as he has gone astray. Anybody dealing with him shall do so at his/her own risk and cost.”
Kaushal Singh has been detained in a civil prison here for not revealing his daughter's whereabouts. The police are searching for the girl in Uttar Pradesh. The CWC which released the girl said that its files have to be examined on Monday to understand what happened. A CWC member said there were two possibilities in such a case — a minor girl's consent is still sought before giving her custody to parents, and in case the girl is a major, she is free to choose who to go with. An NGO is also believed to have counselled the girl. But Prem claims he was not allowed to meet the girl when he went to the shelter. The Sessions Court at Rohini is hearing the matter again on Monday.
(With inputs from Devesh K. Pandey)
