Kerala: Unmarried couple asserts right

Thiruvananthapuram: To be or not to be, that’s the question the pink patrol police teams in the state, formed to offer a lifeline to women in distress, are now faced with. And the moment people feel a patrol team crosses the limit, it finds itself at the receiving end. If the team in Kochi was in the news last week, it was the turn of the team in the State capital on Tuesday when it was taken to task by a couple who relayed its moral policing on Museum premises live on Facebook. The patrol team comprising two lady officers started questioning S.A. Arathy and V. Vishnu who were sitting on museum premises with their hands on each other’s shoulder. The officers warned the couple that that they are not to be seen around and accused them for kissing each other.

The couple who started relaying the video of the policing live on FB questioned the officers’ charge. The lady officers, however, stood the ground and asked them to accompany them to the police station. They also summoned the parents of the two to the police station. By the time the video was seen over 1 lakh times on the social media platform. The girl’s father, who is also a policeman, informed the police that the couple was going to be married and that he found nothing objectionable in them being together. The police which found its action untenable then directed the couple to leave the station premises immediately.   

But the couple would have none of it, and they, along with their friends, started protesting against moral policing and demanded that they be able to meet an officer not below the rank of an assistant commissioner. The police, which said that it had taken the couple into custody based on a complaint received at control room, let them off later after charging them under IPC section 290 for creating public nuisance. Reacting to the incident, city police commissioner Sparjan Kumar said the policewomen attached to Vanitha helpline went to Museum based on a complaint. “A section of citizens want the police to restrict activities of youngsters in public while another section doesn’t want us to do so,” he said. “I have directed the officials not to checkout on couple unless they are minors.”