Less than 12 hours after an 18-year-old woman was allegedly kidnapped in a Telangana village — the incident was caught on a CCTV camera — a video has emerged with the woman, in bridal attire, declaring that she has married one of those men, her boyfriend, with whom she'd tried to elope earlier too.
She said her father was opposed to their inter-caste relationship and she feared for her husband and her own life now. They'd got "married" 10 months ago but the man, 24, was charged with sexual assault and child marriage as she was a minor then. The age hitch is now removed.
She even claimed this morning's incident wasn't staged.
As the four men had their faces covered when she was shoved into a car, she thought she was being kidnapped, she said.
But when she saw it was the man she'd "been in love with for four years", they decided to get married in a temple.
The man, who has worked in the Gulf, belongs to a Scheduled Caste while the woman's caste is listed among Other Backward Classes (OBC) community. Her father is a driver while she is a college student, it is learnt.
Police had formed six teams to trace the woman after she was taken away from her Rajanna Sircilla district around 5:30 am.
AdvertisementThe CCTV footage showed three men getting off a car, pushing the father away and grabbing the woman, whom they shoved into the backseat and sped away.
"One of the kidnappers is suspected to be from the woman's village and someone with who she had been friendly in the past," Inspector Kiran Kumar had said.
