The girl was confined in Pune after she told them about a lower caste boy she liked. Thattil says, “The boy, Anand Chavan, 22, is a hardware engineer based in Savarkar Nagar in Thane. The girl, a college student, resides with her mother at Wagle Estate. They had been in love for the past seven-eight months.”

In May, when the girl told her mother about Anand, she objected to the marriage. “In order to keep them away, the mother along with her brother took the girl to the latter’s place at Indapur in Pune where she was forbidden to go anywhere and kept under a close watch to prevent her from contacting Anand.”

The girl says, “Though initially, I could not contact him, I got a chance to call him one day; I told him about my predicament.” Anand then called the police control room and informed them about the situation. A Pune police team was immediately dispatched to the house.

On knowing that the police had been involved, the uncle and mother compelled the girl to call up Anand and say that she did not want to marry him. “Anand knew that she was being forced to say so and he approached me for help through a common friend,” said Thattil.

Anand also got to know that the girl was being forced to marry some other boy. “The marriage was to be held on Friday and I filed the habeas corpus plea on Thursday morning before Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice RG Ketkar. The judges immediately passed an order that the girl be produced in court on Monday. The court office informed the Pune police and a team was sent to the uncle’s house where the girl’s haldi ceremony was on. They took her into protective custody,” he said.

When the girl was brought to the court, the judges called the lovers together and asked if they are ready and willing to marry each other. “When we both agreed, they told us to go ahead and also convinced her mother about not creating any trouble for us,” said Anand.