A 20-year-old woman teacher, who had eloped with a 17-year-old girl in Rajasthan’s Bikaner, was arrested on Thursday and was produced in a court. She was sent to judicial custody for 15 days.
The teacher has been booked under sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act. The girl she eloped with is a student at her school.
The girl has been presented before the District Child Welfare Committee (CWC). The duo were traced in Chennai on Wednesday by the Rajasthan Police and were brought back to Bikaner.
What’s the case all about?
On June 30, a woman aged 20 and a girl aged 17 were reported missing from Bikaner in Rajasthan.
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The 17-year-old is a student in class 12 at a private school in Bikaner, while the 20-year-old woman is a teacher in that school.
Two days later, on July 2, a purported video of the two surfaced in which the two said in an apologetic tone that they were lesbians and were in love. They said that they “ran away with the fear of getting forcibly married to someone else:. The minor also said that she had not been brainwashed and left home of her own will.
The disappearance of the two sparked protests by certain Hindu groups, who claimed the incident as an act of ‘love jihad’. These groups highlighted that the minor is a Hindu and her teacher is a Muslim.
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The relatives of the minor in Bikaner were demanding the arrest of the teacher after accusing her of brainwashing the minor girl.
LGBTQ+ rights activist Anish Gawande told Outlook that no one runs from home unless it is the last resort.
"Nobody runs away from home unless it is the absolute last resort available to them. My heart goes out to both of them who were forced to flee from their own families because of not being accepted for who they are. The law must take its course, but we must also remain sensitive to the extraordinary circumstances that have pushed the girls to take this step and deal with their plight with compassion instead of hate," said Gawande, founder of Pink List India.
The arrest of the woman
On Thursday, based on the minor’s statement, sections of POCSO Act were added against the teacher in the existing FIR.
Earlier, on the basis of the complaint lodged by the minor’s father, an FIR was lodged against the teacher and her two brothers under sections 363 (kidnapping), 366 (kidnapping, abducting, or inducing a woman for forced marriage, etc.), and 120-B of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in addition to relevant sections of the Juvenile Justice Act.
Inspector General (IG), Bikaner Range, Om Prakash told the media, “The police are looking into the matter and are further investigating the case. Their statements have been recorded. The duo were traced from Chennai with the help of Tamil Nadu Police and with the intervention of cyber-crime cell and the local police in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.”
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As per the police, soon after the two were traced, the protests cooled off in Bikaner.
The incident led to the Opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) criticising the Congress government led by Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot in the state. BJP MLA and Rajasthan’s Leader of Opposition Rajendra Rathore on Monday visited Bikaner and extended his support to the protestors who had shut the local markets in response to the issue.
