Twenty-year-old women, Aditi* and Ahalya* had met in college in Salem’s Thalaivasal. Aditi has been married off to a man by her parents. In July 2021, the duo told their parents that they were going to college to collect their transfer certificate. But after meeting in Thalaivasal, the women decided to leave for Chennai and settle down in the city. Their families and Aditi’s husband had filed missing complaints with the Thalaivasal police and based on their complaints the police decided to track the couple down, Salem district Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) told TNM.
A team of the Salem district police tracked the couple down to Chennai’s Kannnagi Nagar where they were reportedly living with a group of women. Speaking to TNM, the DSP confirmed that the police knew that Aditi and Ahalya were adults and that they were living as a couple.
The Salem police claim that they did not ‘force the couple to split up’. “They (the women) said that they wanted to come back to Kallakurichi. We then handed them over to the women police who spoke to them and gave them the options and asked whether they wanted to return to their parents. The couple said that they did it as a ‘joke’ and chose to return to their parents,” the DSP said. TNM could not contact the couple to corroborate the police’s account of the events. According to the police, Aditi had not consummated her marriage and did not wish to live with her husband and chose to live with her parents.
A landmark judgement was passed by the Madras High Court to protect sex-couples but there are still instances in which police in Tamil Nadu separate consenting adults in relationships. The Madras High Court’s Justice Anand Venkatesh was promoted to issue detailed guidelines to protect LGBTQIA+ couples to ensure that they get to access safe spaces and are not harassed by the police. The judge was hearing a similar case of a same sex couple from Madurai who had eloped to Chennai and was seeking protection.
The court has said that if the families of the couples who are consenting adults file missing complaints, then the case must be closed without harassing the couple after taking statements from them. In the Thalaivasal case, the police decided to act on the missing complaint by the families by tracking down the couple using the IMA numbers of their phones.
Speaking to TNM, lawyer and women’s rights activist Sudha Ramalingam says that it is common for the police to separate individuals staying out of customary or conventional relationships and sending them back to their families. However, when it comes to women, the interference from institutions is much more, she says.
“I think especially when it comes to women - even adult women in consenting relationships - there is always the concern of custody. The concept of women having to be taken care of by their parents or their husbands is ingrained in our minds,” she says. She also adds that while dealing with matters of the same-sex relationships, it is important for the police to be sensitised, and also for the women to know their rights.
“We don’t know the pressures they would be facing which have made them take the decision to go back to their parents. It cannot be a ‘joke’ for two women to elope and live together. In such peculiar cases, the police must involve independent expert agencies and counsellors or advocates to offer help and support to the women,” Sudha added.