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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.