An Indian father has launched a petition to the Kerala High Court alleging his 22-year-old daughter has been kidnapped by a lesbian with the aid of an LGBT rights group – a tactic often employed to stop marriages parents don’t approve of.

Mohanan PS, from the small town of Shoranur claims that his daughter, a final year Business Communications student, failed to return home from college on the evening of 5 July, and that she was spirited away by an unnamed lesbian.

Mohanan made a complaint to police in the town the following day, alleging that her daughter was abducted with the assistance of the Bangalore branch of LGBT and HIV rights group Sangama – which he labelled a ‘dreaded organization.’

‘The attempt of the lesbian and others to force the detainee to be part of an organization of despicable gays, lesbians, transgender people and eunuchs under coercion, threat and duress could not be allowed in a democratic country like India,’ the father alleges in his petition.

He claimed that his daughter’s life must be in danger and that police have failed to act on his complaint to rescue her.

Mohanan claims that because same-sex marriage is not legal in India, the girl he says is holding his daughter cannot have any legal custody of her.

According to the Global Post, filing false kidnapping charges is a common tactic used by Indian parents trying to safe face by preventing their children entering into inconvenient ‘love marriages’ such as where the partners are of mixed castes or faiths.

Maya Shanker of the Indian lesbian group Sangini said filing false kidnapping charges because a child was gay and living with their partner had become ‘a quite common practice, because basically it puts one person as a victim.’

‘If a family wants to keep their own nest clean, they can claim their daughter as a victim [and avoid acknowledging she was involved in a lesbian relationship],’ Shanker told the Global Post.