Behrampore, Aug. 2: The young woman in Murshidabad whose husband had been beheaded for marrying outside his community went without food along with her infant son and elderly mother today.

Her brother, a farm labourer, has gone in search of their father, absconding since his son-in-law was found dead, and in the absence of his daily wage, they had no money to buy food.

Police are still searching for the father, who is one of the accused in the beheading.

Today, they arrested 22 of the 27 villagers detained last night and charged them with murder. The chief judicial magistrate’s court has sent those arrested to a fortnight’s jail custody.

A kangaroo court at Lakshmanpur village had held the man guilty and pronounced the beheading order.

After a series of police raids in the village, most men have fled.

“My father has breathing problems and my mother was worried. So my brother has gone to look for him at my re-latives’ homes. There was no one to buy food for us. The village women were too panic- stricken to offer help. The men are missing and all shops in our village remained shut today,” said the 25-year-old widow. Her brother is a farm labourer.

The police said the woman has identified her husband’s body. “We had the body identified by the widow and we started a murder case on the basis of that,” said Arun Das, the inspector in charge of Behrampore police station.

Behrampore subdivisional officer Utpal Bhadra visited the family this evening and asked the woman to take possession of the body but she refused.

“We will have to cremate the body,” said additional superintendent of police Debashish Bej.

The woman said she was not in a position to take custody of the body. “We are poor and it would be difficult to perform his last rites among villagers from a different community.”

A maid in Mumbai, she had come to see her parents with her two-and-a-half-year-old son and husband when the truth about his community became known. She had hidden it from the residents of the dogmatic village and her own family when she fell in love and married the construction worker in Mumbai. The ploy had worked during their earlier visit in 2006.

After the man was found dead, the woman, her mother and brother went to the police.

The home secretary had yesterday promised “strictest action” against the guilty.