Shakespearean love tragedies are nothing new to the Indian psyche, a society in which non-traditional marriages were frowned upon. Numerous Bollywood and regional language movies have used Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet combined with lilting melodies as a sure shot formula for box-office success. The sad part as evidenced by this story is that such unions still are taboo in large sections of society, particularly Hindu-Muslim unions. [BBC]

Two star-crossed lovers committed suicide after the local village council, or panchayat, ordered them to annul their marriage or face death.
Amreen was Muslim and her husband, Lokesh, a Hindu. Their match was simply unacceptable to their communities. The couple poisoned themselves.
Now police have charged the entire panchayat with abetting suicide.

The love story itself is quite filmi.

Her family lived across the highway in a predominantly Muslim part of the village.
A mosque was visible over the high walls of her father’s large farmhouse. Inside, buffalo were tethered to posts – he sold milk for a living.
“The boy, Lokesh, would come here every morning to buy milk. That’s how he met the girl and they fell in love,”

The two left the village and eloped. However, when they came back things went south. Accounts differ, the police state that the village council forced them to seperate or die, the village council blames the family.

The BBC story has the reporters visiting the couple’s village. The village chief tries to cite familial pressure as the reason for the couple’s suicide. When the crew visits the families, they try to spin a similar tale. However, it is quite obvious that they’ve been pressured by the village chief. Police are investigating claims that the village council aka the panchayat drove the couple to suicide.

Whatever the case be, how sad is it that to this day young couples are being driven to such extremes from age old traditions and prejudices.

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