A young woman and a man standing in a park, surrounded by a group of men. Many of them with red tilaks on their foreheads look on as the young man is forced to tie a mangalsutra or thaali around the girl's neck. The short video ends with the man shooting the selfie video, an activist of the Bahujan Samaj Party, looking into the camera and saying, 'thank you brother and sister'.
Following this distressful episode at the Oxygen park at Kandlakoya in Secunderabad, the couple has gone missing. The distressed father of the 19-year-old student, K* Reddy, approached the police with a complaint. The video of the duo at the park had gone viral and many, including journalists, have posted it on social media without blurring their faces. The father in his complaint said that it had caused them mental agony.
The police have arrested two people seen in the video on Thursday, four others who were involved in the forced marriage are now absconding. The father in his complaint has also said that the men had behaved indecently with his daughter.
Police arrested Mulangiri Srihari Chary and Kunchala Anand shortly after the complaint was registered and are on the lookout for the other four accused - Kanuganti Avinash, Pitla Ashok, Barla Suresh Kumar and Talapuram Chandrasekhar.
The police have booked them under IPC section 342 (wrongful confinement), section 354 (assault or criminal force to woman with intent to outrage her modesty) and section 506 (criminal intimidation).
The father of the girl was first alerted about his daughter being married off at the Oxygen park at Kandlakoya when a relative sent him the video over Whatsapp
The father soon approached the college where he had dropped the girl off that day morning. At the college, he learnt that his daughter, a first-year student, had not gone to college that day. He then left to the Oxygen park from where he got to know that his daughter was with a distant relative when the goons presumed that they were a couple, say police.
“We are yet to talk to the girl, the investigation is ongoing,” was all PV Padmaja, Deputy Commissioner of Police, Balanagar, Cyberabad had to say.
Other than the BSP, the Bajrang Dal, the youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and part of the RSS family were protesting in Hyderabad on account of Valentine's day celebrations. The group had also formed teams to scout parks and malls in search of couples.
Note: Though initial reports had said the men belonged to the Bajrang Dal, police clarified that at least one of them was from BSP. The identity of others is not yet known.