“Within minutes of reaching home, Satish came to our house, this time with his wife, brother, brother’s wife, two cousins and wife of one of them. They started screaming, and demanded we come out of the house. My youngest brother opened the door when he heard the commotion. The mob hit him with a gandasi (sharp agriculture tool used for harvesting crop) and huge wooden sticks. When Satyawan, his wife and I came out, they attacked us too. We also sustained injuries. But as people in the colony started to come out, Satish and everyone else left."

The panic-stricken family took a badly injured Sompal to a hospital. "We arranged an auto to take our brother to hospital. But when we were passing in front of their (accused's) house, they started even beating the auto with sticks,” Ramjeet recounted.

The police, however, refutes Ramjeet’s claim about the weapon used. An official in Jind police station told Swarajya, "The medical reports of Sompal do not indicate use of any gandasi. It seems he died from the blows of a wooden stick below his ear. Sompal was handicapped. The family was also quite poor and he probably didn’t even have the strength to survive such heavy blows."

The burning question in the tale, however, is - how is that something that happened four years ago became a matter of honour all of a sudden, that too violent enough to claim a life? And how come a "lower caste" family feels "insulted" with association with an "upper caste" family?

Well, while the media seldom looks beyond fixed narratives, the reality is more nuanced.

Neighbours say the trigger could have been the better financial status of the Dhanak family, or even the fact that a person moving out of his caste, doesn’t matter if it’s upper or lower, attracts the ire of his community.

"Ye sab paise ka nasha hai (the accused are drunk on money). The accused have become well-off in recent times. The victim’s family lives in penury. This seems more like a case of bravado than honour killing,” says a man who is playing cards in a group outside a grocery shop at the beginning of Chandralok Colony. To supplement his argument, he says that the colony had never witnessed any incident of caste bitterness in the past. "Dhanaks, Nayaks, Jats, Brahmins, everyone lives here peacefully," he says. There are more Dhanak families than other groups, he adds.

A woman making haari (a mud stove) in the area, also a Dhanak, says inter-caste marriages are simply unacceptable.

There are others who share her view. "Ye sab dhaayi laakh ka khel hai (it's all a matter of Rs 2.5 lakh),” says a man from Nayak community. "Inter-caste marriages are on the rise because the government is encouraging this by giving Rs 2.5 lakh to such couples. This is highly condemnable. Everyone should just marry into one's own caste. It's good for everyone," he says.

But why would a “lower-caste” person support entrenchment of caste-system instead of calling for its annihilation? Shouldn’t he cheer the upward social mobility achieved by the Dhanak woman by marrying a Jat? The man says the community doesn't benefit by members moving out of the caste. "After marriage, she became a Jat. Her children will be Jats. So it doesn't change anything for us," the man replies.

Surprisingly, there are takers for inter-caste marriages. "This is the new normal. Because of a lack of brides, people go and purchase them from Bihar, Nepal, Kerala, etc. So what’s wrong in marrying into other castes? Isn’t it better than purchasing?” asks an old-timer as he smokes his hookah.

Meanwhile, the police has arrested the accused men in the case, but not the three women yet. The investigation is on, an official, who shared with us the copy of the first information report (FIR) in the case, said.

What if the caste equation was different in this case?

Member of the only other Jat family in Sompal's lane, told Swarajya bitterly that if it were a Jat man killing a Dhanak, there would have been a massive backlash. "If a Jat had killed a Dalit in a case of honour killing, the news would be all over the place and netas (leaders) would be making a beeline. Now, no one cares," he said, a view that others in the area agree with.

But again, the reality is more nuanced. Jind itself looks like a bundle of contradictions as just outside its mini-secretariat, two groups of Dalits protesting against caste atrocities are sharing space with a Jat group demanding reservation. Sitting and raising slogans in makeshift tents, both claim marginalisation and oppression.

“We have been sitting here since February. The political parties, be it in the government or the opposition, cannot care less for our demands,” says a Dalit protestor.

As such, Haryana fares better compared to most other big states as far as atrocities against Dalits are concerned. Jind, though, is different and is often in news for caste-related violence. Perhaps, for this reason, Dalit activism is quite noticeable in the city and the surrounding areas.

Rajat Kalsan, a lawyer and Dalit activist, tells Swarajya that the government has formally accepted all the demands made by them, but delivered on none of them. "The politicians make all kinds of promises when atrocity happens. But forget all about it later," he says.