Chandigarh: Haryana government on Wednesday said it
will ensure protection to a bureaucrat couple who are marrying
outside their castes.
Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda said law enforcing
agencies will intervene if a need was felt to do so after some
media reports suggested that the family of an Indian Foreign
Service officer Neelam Sharma had received threats and faced
protests from her caste group and a section of the village
panchayat in Bhiwani district for her decision to marry an IAS
officer outside her caste.
"If a need is felt to intervene, we will...law will take
its own course," Hooda told reporters here when asked to
comment on the issue.
He, however, said the matter did not pertain to any
diktat from a Khap or caste-council.
Neelam Sharma, who is currently posted at the Indian
mission in Moscow, is set to marry IAS officer Kuldeep Yadav
in Delhi later this month.
Yadav and Sharma had met during their training and the
former is currently posted as Additional District Magistrate
in Godhra, Gujarat.
However, Neelam Sharma`s brother Umesh tried to play
down the issue.
"It is a matter between two families, which has been
played up by the media. The issue has been blown out of
proportions and too much hype has been given. Reports that our
family has received threats are not true. We request to the
media not to play up the matter," Umesh told PTI over
phone.
The reports had pointed out that tension had been
brewing in the village over the past few days over the wedding
plans, with Brahmin Sabha, in Bhiwani district, holding a
meeting with the Patranwali village panchayat on October 30,
in which directions were reportedly issued to Sharma`s father
Ram Kumar to restrain his daughter from marrying a man from
another caste.
Sharma is an upper caste Brahmin while Yadav, who
hails from Rewari district in Haryana, belongs to the Ahir
community.
PTI
