After a wedding kiss in Hapur, a full-blown brawl and a runaway bride - The Indian Express

EVERYTHING WAS going to plan. The baraat had arrived to the cacophony of the wedding band. Minutes later, the couple – the bride in a deep-red lehenga and the groom in an ivory-coloured bandgala and matching turban – exchanged garlands. Then came the twist: the groom lunged forward and kissed the bride – "on the forehead".

Nobody had told Deepanshu, who accompanies his father to play the dhol at weddings and other functions, that he could kiss his bride. Now that he had done so, all hell broke loose. Someone in the bride's family loudly objected to the kiss and soon, the wedding venue turned into a battlefield – plastic chairs were flung around, plates of food and juice lay spilled on the carpet, punches flew freely, some of the relatives were hauled off to the police station and others to a nearby hospital.

The marriage was called off and the baraat returned without the bride. Then came another twist: in the stealth of the darkness, the 20-something bride gathered her immense lehenga and spunk, and walked out of her house in Ashok Nagar and into the home of her groom in the nearby Shiv Nagar area, where the two married in a hastily arranged ceremony.

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Deepanshu and Savita, childhood sweethearts both in their 20s, are now man and wife, but in two localities separated by less than a kilometre in Hapur, in western Uttar Pradesh, the memory of that kiss – and the runaway bride – hangs heavy, days after the brawl of May 20.

'All this kissing is ok in big cities, not here'

At the family's ancestral home in Harchana village, about 20 km from Hapur, the bride's uncle Nepal Singh, 55, says his younger brother, Savita's father Naresh, was among those detained by the police after the brawl at the wedding. "My brother and the groom's father were at the police station when we heard that Savita had left the house around 4.30 in the morning. The groom's sister reached the police station to take her father home," he says.

Savita's uncle Nepal Singh back in their ancestral village in Galahoti, Harchana, about 20 mins away from Hapur. (Express Photo)

And then adds, "All this kissing might be okay in big cities like Delhi or Noida but in towns and villages like ours, it is not acceptable. My brother may forgive Savita for what she has done, but I won't. Five members of our family got hurt in this fight and had to be hospitalised. The couple can do whatever they want to in their own house, but how can they do such things in public?"

Savita's father Naresh, a daily wage worker in Hapur, didn't want to speak on the incident.

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The same night as Savita's scheduled wedding on May 20, her sister Chanchal got married in a far less eventful ceremony. Refusing to talk about the chaos at her sister's wedding, Chanchal says, "Meri shaadi ho gayi thi aur meri baraat nikal gayi (I got married and left). I don't know what happened at my sister's wedding after that."

A video grab of Deepanshu and Savita at their wedding.

At Hapur's Dehaat Police Station, an officer said, "There is no FIR in this case. Several members from the wedding were detained after the brawl. Among them were Pappu (the groom's father) and Naresh (the bride's father). Several others were injured and admitted to a nearby hospital."

'Aaj kal ka trend'

A five-minute walk from Savita's father's house in Ashok Nagar is Shiv Nagar, where Deepanshu's father Pappu 'dhol wala' is a familiar name. Their house, a three-room, single-storeyed structure at the end of a narrow lane, is teeming with relatives after the recent wedding.

It's in one of the rooms that the pheras finally took place in the early hours of May 21, after the bride's daring five-minute walk from her house.

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Showing a reel of her brother's wedding day that's on her Instagram feed, Narya Verma, one of the groom's sisters, defends the kiss. "Aaj kal ka trend hai yeh. Photographers pose karne ko bolte hai aur mere bhai ne pose kiya, isme kaun si badi baat hai (It's the trend nowadays. Photographers tell the couple to pose and my brother was only posing for them…what is the big deal)?" Narya's Instagram feed is filled with reels from her brother's wedding and haldi ceremonies.

Savita's House in Hapur's Ashok Nagar near Shatabdi school where the wedding was set to happen. (Express Photo)

Sitting on a cot and lighting up her beedi, the groom's mother Santosh, 45, says her son, the youngest of her five children, has done no wrong. "If a husband does not kiss his wife, who else will?"

Dismissing the brawl at the wedding and the tension with the bride's family since that night, she says, "Every wedding has a little bit of drama. What is a wedding without a fight?"

Amid all the fuss over the kiss, the groom and the bride said their lips were sealed. "Hum theek hain (We are fine). I am on a honeymoon in Nainital. My wife and I are safe. I don't want to talk about the incident anymore," said Deepanshu.