Even in this day and age, many women are married off by their families against their will in our country. And in a lot of these cases, the women are unhappy and sometimes even mistreated by their in-laws.
According to The Times of India, the marriage of a woman named Jyoti was arranged to Gopal Singh in Alwar, Rajasthan. On June 1, however, the husband filed a missing person report with the police stating that his wife had left the house and never returned.
After tracking the newlywed’s phone, police officials were able to locate her in Manesar, Haryana. She had run away with her lesbian partner Gunjan Bai, a national level sportswoman and her partner for 4 years. Police authorities revealed,
“On the husband’s complaint, we started looking for Jyoti and tracing her whereabouts through her mobile network, found her in Manesar. We brought both the women to Alwar and they revealed that they were in a relationship for last four years. Jyoti also claimed that her parents forced her to marry Gopal though she wanted to get married to Gunjan. She also claimed that her husband used to lock her in the house when he went to work in a factory in Shajahanpur.”
The magistrate deciding their case set them free because they were two adults in a consensual relationship.
We are glad that Jyoti had the courage to escape an unhappy and forced marriage as well as come out in society openly as a lesbian.