The Delhi High Court on Wednesday, 10 March, ordered the Delhi Police to provide protection to a 23-year-old lesbian woman, who was married off forcibly, from her family and in-laws.
According to The Indian Express, the woman was pressured to marry a man in October 2019, and has now run away from her matrimonial home. The court directed the cops to ensure neither her nor the members of the NGO helping her, be harassed or harmed.
In the plea filed before the court, via advocates Vrindra Grover and Soutik Banerjee, the petitioner asserted that her parents knew she identified as a homosexual but “forcibly got her married to a man”. Her parents also forced her to continue living in ‘heterosexual relationships’.
“The petitioner told her husband that she would like to file for divorce, as the continuance of their marriage was adversely affecting her mental health and physical well-being, and since she had a different sexual orientation, there was no scope for either of them to experience fulfillment within the marriage. However, on some pretext or the other, the petitioner’s husband delayed breaking this news to his family and the petitioner continued to live in the misery of a life she did not identify with,” her counsel said in the petition, reported The Indian Express.
The petition added that the father of the woman, along with other male members of the extended family, kept calling and harassing the social activists and threatened to lodge cases against them.
The woman alleged that her relatives contacted a “religious guru” to “cure” her of the sexual orientation. Fearing threat to her life, as per the petition, she left her matrimonial home on 7 March, the report said.
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