‘Security’ Given to Woman In Yogi Adityanath Video Row

The mother says the police personnel come in handy to stop the woman from running off to Lucknow every so often.

Journalist Prashant Kanojia and UP Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

(Photo: The Quint)

The video showing a 32-year-old woman expressing her desire to marry Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and alleging that the two have been in conversation via video calls for nearly a year has stirred up quite a controversy, prompting the arrest of journalists and subsequent condemnation of misuse of state power.

The woman, now at her two-room house in Kanpur, endlessly watches videos on her mobile phone while a woman officer of the UP Police’s local intelligence office and a male constable keep an eye on her. 

The woman claims the police personnel are for her “security” while her mother says they have come in handy to stop her from running off to Lucknow every so often, according to The Indian Express.

The woman was married to a Kanpur-based man two years previously and left her husband about 10 days after they married, said her mother. The two rooms in the house are crowded with tokens and gifts returned by the woman's in-laws, serving as reminders of her failed marriage.

‘Like the Rest of the World, My Mother Too Doesn’t Understand Me’

The woman who had, of late, been living separately in a room at some distance from the house, moved back after her controversial video, reported The Indian Express. The family claims that her failed marriage had caused the woman to become mentally unwell and her state of mind deteriorated with a lack of work and income, and loneliness.

“We are poor people and do not know what to do,” said the distraught mother, recalling instances of the woman selling her gold jewellery to go to Gorakhpur and Lucknow, heedless to their predicament.

“Like the rest of the world, my mother too does not understand me," the woman said, still staring into her phone, saying she is “not a fool like everyone thinks”. Further, the woman says that she has a BSc degree and wanted to ask for Adityanath's help after she abandoned her in-laws.

Additional SP of Kanpur South Raveena Tyagi who met the woman said, “She kept repeating what she told the media.”

Meanwhile, the family said that they had consulted a psychiatrist previously and have to seek further psychiatric help for the woman.

(With inputs from The Indian Express.)