Amanpreet Kaur keeps feeling her stomach every few minutes.
"I am scared something may happen to the baby," says the 22-year-old, admitted to Gidderbaha Civil Hospital in Muktsar, five months pregnant and five days after she says her own family threw her into the Rajasthan Feeder canal to die.
The reason, police say, is not honour. It is caste. Amanpreet, a Jat Sikh woman, married Satnam Singh, a Mazhabi Sikh - a Dalit convert to Sikhism - two years ago. The family never accepted it. The couple had already sought police protection once, then lived in Punjab and Haryana after a High Court order.
On September 6 night, around 9 pm, her father Baljeet Singh, brother Noorpreet, cousins Sukhpreet, Lovepreet and Novalpreet allegedly stormed Satnam's house in Karaiwala village with rods, assaulted Satnam - his head bandaged with a cut running through it - dragged Amanpreet by her hair and forced her into a car. She says they first tried to strangle her, then drove her to an uncle's house, and at 7 am on September 7, drove her to the canal.
"My father said, 'There is no point keeping her alive, she will not change her statement.' They grabbed her and threw her into the water," she recalls. She could not swim. She clung to a wild plant for half-an-hour, hiding, terrified they would see her alive. She survived.
Police have booked six men for attempt to murder and kidnapping. Amanpreet's question hangs over the case file: “What kind of father doesn't care for daughter's child? Wasn't he happy when my brother and I were born?”
The case exposes two failures. First, the farce of police protection that expires after two years of "peaceful" life. The DSP says they recorded a statement before that they faced no threat and wanted no gunmen. Second, how inter-caste marriage in Punjab, despite Sikhism's rejection of caste, still invites feudal violence. The law saved them once. The canal was meant to make sure it didn't have to again.