Meerut: A Dalit man in Bulandshahr's Sonda Habibpur village was forced to lick his own spit in public because his son married a Muslim.

The Hindu reports that the 44-year-old, in his complaint at Khurja Nagar police station, said that the girl's family initially filed a complaint with the police against the marriage.

Later, a court dismissed the complaint and allowed the couple to live together. Following this, the girl's family approached the panchayat and asked them to intervene.

The panchayat called a meeting and asked the Dalit man to attend it. When he went there, he saw that about nearly a 100 upper caste people were at the meeting, along with the girl's family, reports The Hindu.

At the meeting, the Dalit man was assaulted, made to lick his own spit and the women in his family were threatened with rape. The son, who is 21, had fled the village with his 18-year-old wife by then.

"We have been living under fear after the incident. My family has been threatened not to return to the village. My son and daughter-in-law are also in hiding," the man told Times of India.

He further alleged that the police initially refused to lodge a complaint and were forced to do so after a local news channel ran the story.

Bulandshahr SSP KB Singh refuted the allegations and said, "We lodged a FIR against the five accused as soon as we received a written complaint."

The FIR has been filed under sections 147 (punishment for rioting), 323 (punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code and relevant sections of the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act on Thursday. Naresh Solanki, Kuldeep, Vishnu, Billu and Bhura, all residents of Sonda Habibpur village, are the five accused in the case.

No arrests have been made so far.