KOTA: The diktat of
Khap Panchayat of Regar community in
Bundi
has branded a family of six outcast, including two aged couples, two marriageable youths, a girl and a nine-year-old, forcing them to lead a neglected life in isolation for the last five years.
The Khap Panchayat of Regar community, in 2014, had declared Rupnarayan Regar (58) and his family of five, outcast only because he refused to hand over his four-year-old maternal grandson,
Yash Kumar, to his grandmother. Yash’s grandmother had pushed Yash, then one-year-old, and his mother
Rekhabai
, out of her home in Talera town, after Yash’s father
Durgashankar Regar
(32) died in a road accident in 2010, saying that she cannot look after them anymore.
The mother-son duo then moved to Rekhabai’s father Rupnarayan’s house in Bundi and lived there until Rekhabai was remarried to another person. Following her remarriage, her son Yash continued to stay with his maternal grandfather, Rupnarayan.
Four years later, in 2014, Yash was awarded the accident insurance claim of Rs 3 lakhs of his deceased father. The grandmother then moved to the Khap Panchayat in Bundi to claim custody of her grandson Yash. The Khap ordered Rupnarayan to send back Yash to the grandmother but Rupnarayan refused to abide by the Panchyat’s order, saying why did the grandmother turned the boy out from home when his father died and why was she now suddenly keen on taking the boy back.
Rupnarayan’s refusal to send back Yash to his grandmother resulted into the Khap’s diktat and since then the family is forced to lead life in isolation, in a colony of his own community members in Barli Bundi area.
Rupnarayan, who worked as daily labour, has fix-deposited the insurance claim amount in the name Yash, who would be able to withdraw the same when he crosses 18. “For last five years, our family is not invited at any social function, celebration and festival of the community nor are we spoken to, by our community members,” laments Rupnarayan. “My eldest son Tarun (28), younger daughter Deepmala (25) and youngest son Dharmraj (23) are still bachelors as no one in the community would keep any ties with us due to us being ‘outcast’,” Rupnarayan said.
Deepmala said, “My family has so far received five to six wedding proposals for me but as soon as the groom’s family comes to know we are ‘outcast’, they refuse to go ahead with the marriage, until we are taken back into our community.” She demands the government and the agencies concerned, to punish the community Khap panchayat for the wrong they have done to her family.
When contacted, the members of the community Panchayat refused to have delivered such a diktat. “Rupnarayan has lost his mind and suffers from a psychological disorder and that is the reason he keeps uttering this nonsense of him being branded outcast by the panchayat,” claimed Modu Lal Verma, head of Bundi city Rager Panchayat.
Riyazuddin Ansari, legal counsel of Rupnarayan said, a civil suit in civil magistrate court was filed over a year ago against the panchs for ostracising the family and notices to the concerned parties were served, but the matter is still in trial.
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