The family of Ved Pal, 21, blamed "police inaction" for his death saying the youth had taken a court order for the custody of his wife Sonia.
They said he was accompanied by a Warrant Officer of the Punjab and Haryana High Court and 15 Haryana policemen when he was attacked by residents of Singhwal village, about 165 kms from Chandigarh, on Wednesday night.
Denying allegations that Pal was left to the mercy of the mob by the policemen, Jind police chief Satheesh Balan said a crowd of nearly 400 people attacked the police party and Warrant Officer Suraj Bhan who were in different vehicles.
The crowd dragged Bhan out of the vehicle even as Pal panicked and tried to escape under the cover of darkness, but was surrounded and lynched by the villagers who were against his marriage, the officer said.
A case under Section 302 (murder) and other offences under the Indian Penal Code have been registered against the girl's parents and unidentified villagers, Balan said.
"We have launched a search for the girl to record her statement," he said. Balan said after the marriage, Sonia, who belonged to the same 'gotra' (sub-caste) as Pal, had been allegedly kept under "illegal confinement" by her parents prompting Pal to move the High Court to seek her custody.
Balan said the policemen managed to rescue Bhan who was injured and taken to Narwana in this district. Pal's body was kept on the village road before being removed by the police for post mortem and was later handed over to his relatives.
The body of Pal was cremated in his native Matour village in neighbouring Kaithal district, which was gripped by tension. The victim's family members told mediapersons in Matour that had the police acted on time, they could have saved him.
Meanwhile, police have been deployed near the house of Sonia. The latest incident comes amid a raging 'gotra' controversy involving a young couple from Jhajjar district, where a youth's family had been directed to leave the village by a local panchayat after he married a girl of the same sub-caste.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court on Thursday directed the Haryana government to provide adequate security to the family of the groom. Earlier, decomposed bodies of Manoj (23) and his wife Babli (19), residents of Karora village in Kaithal district who belonged to the same 'gotra', were fished out from a canal in Narnound town in Hisar district after a panchayat opposed their marriage.
