By Aiswarya Raj
When Mohammad Shanu (22) and Akansha Kandari (23) submitted a notice on January 7 at the sub-district magistrate’s office in Uttarakhand’s Udham Singh Nagar stating their intention to marry, they thought they were merely following established procedure. Little did they imagine that their notice, complete with personal details, would go viral on social media.
“I got a message from my family five days later which included the photograph of the first page of our file with our personal details. It appeared on social media with the caption ‘love jihad’,” recalls Shanu, who owns a salon at Bazpur.
The incident occurred despite the police protection given to the couple on Uttarakhand High Court’s December 16 orders. In their plea before the court, the couple said that they wanted to get married but couldn’t due to threats from Kandari’s mother and “other organisations”. They also alleged there was a “serious threat to their lives”,
In its ruling, the high court ordered police protection at Bazpur police station for six weeks, asking Bazpur Station House Officer to assess the threat perception and adopt suitable measures at the end of the period.
According to the couple, despite the orders, they continue to face opposition from right-wing groups – on January 30, outfits such as the Bajrang Dal accompanied Kandari’s mother to the local SDM office to “object to the marriage”.
In her letter to the SDM, Kandari’s mother Reena Devi sought her daughter’s “custody until the notice is examined”, saying that Shanu had lured and misled her under “love jihad”
“Aakansha testified before the office that she was marrying me of her own volition,” Shanu said.
The couple met through Facebook in 2018, meeting each other for the first time in 2022.
This story was originally published in indianexpress.com. Read the full story here.