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BAREILLY: His name, she knew the day she fell for him, would raise walls between them. Mohammad Iqbal. Not what her parents had in mind for the 22-year-old Hindu girl from a town near Varanasi diligently preparing for administrative exams. After four years of trying to bring her family around and failing -- and then suddenly facing the threat of arrest if her unhappy kin pressed charges -- they left. Many like them have, or are, running away from towns in UP.
“When my parents found out about Iqbal, I was locked inside my room, CCTV cameras at every possible point in the house,” Smriti, now 26, told TOI. “They took me to a hypnotist to check if he had hypnotised me into falling for him.” Eventually, they disowned her. Smriti and Iqbal then rented a house in Delhi, applied for marriage under the Special Marriages Act.