This one takes the cake when compared to Bollywood scripts of lovers getting to live together after parents oppose it tooth and nail. Ask lawyer Joseph Thattil who recently filed a habeas corpus in the Bombay High Court and rescued a 21-year-old girl from the confinement of her mother and uncle.

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.

... contd.