The Hindu : National : Caste panchayat expels youth for embracing Islam

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Caste panchayat expels youth for embracing Islam

Special Correspondent

JAIPUR: A caste panchayat of the Jat community has hounded out a youth who embraced Islam and returned from Maharashtra to his native Chainpura village in Sikar district after marrying a Muslim girl. The panchayat also announced a social boycott of the youth’s kin living in the village.

Kaluram Burdak, now known as Usman Sheikh, left for Kolhapur in Maharashtra with his wife Zulekha on Monday after the caste elders ruled that the newly-wed couple could not stay in the village. His parents and brothers have reportedly been ostracised with the villagers proclaiming that they had severed all relations with the family.

Usman Sheikh, working as a mason in Kolhapur for several years, converted to Islam about four months ago and married Zulekha in the Maharashtra town. When he returned to Chainpura in Danta Ramgarh tehsil with his wife early this month, the villagers came to know of his conversion and took exception to it.

Even as the 30-year-old youth kept insisting that he had embraced Islam of his own free will and his marriage performed through ‘Nikah’ at a mosque was valid, the Jat community opposed his new religious status and convened a caste panchayat.

The youth, summoned before the community elders, put up a brave face and declared that he was now a practising Muslim. The panchayat rejected the plea of Usman’s father to allow his son and daughter-in-law to stay in the village and ordered the couple to leave immediately.

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