Two youngsters were beaten to death by their relatives on the orders of a local panchayat in a village in Agra for defying a diktat to part ways.

The police said 20-year-old Mahesh and 19-year-old Guriya were beaten to death and their bodies were cut up and set afire in Narharra village in the early hours of Tuesday.

The upper caste Hindu families objected because the two were related.

Guriya was the daughter of Mahesh's maternal uncle's (mausa) sister. Community members said that by the way the two families were related, Mahesh and Guriya were 'brother and sister'.

"No one dared to raise his voice against the brutal act. We received information only after Mahesh's grandfather lodged a complaint with the local police on Tuesday night," Superintendent of Police Vinay Yadav said over telephone from Agra.

The main culprits are still at large.

"While we have picked up a few eyewitnesses from the village, police teams have been sent in search of the key culprits and we hope to arrest them soon", he said.

Yadav added: "Even Guriya's mother Rajbala was witness to the act, but surprisingly, she did not intervene or raise any objection to the community decision.

 "The key culprit is Rajbala's brother Yogesh Singh with whom she had been living along with her daughter, ever since her husband disappeared mysteriously about a decade ago."

It was Yogesh Singh who traced his niece Guriya and Mahesh at a relatives house in a nearby village on Tuesday.

Singh forcibly brought them to his own village where they were charged, prosecuted and convicted by their own self-styled family panchayat.