Chandigarh: Jasbir Kaur, a 21-year-old housewife, committed suicide by setting herself on fire on Nov.30 here after her brother shot and killed her husband in cold blood the evening before.
The real story behind the young couple’s untimely death once again points to the rapidly surfacing caste tensions in the Punjabi society.
From a upper caste Jat Sikh family of village Jandiala, near Amritsar, Jasbir Kaur did the unthinkable. She fell in love, eloped to marry Gurcharan, a Dalit Balmiki, who had been a regular visitor to her father’s home. While the rest of her family swallowed their resentment, her brother Kulbir Singh who was constantly taunted by boys in his village, obviously continued to nurse a grudge. (Asian Age, Dec. 1, 1999)
