(Representative image)

AHMEDABAD: In a sort of reverse of the ‘love-jihad’ motif , a Hindu girl has secured custody of her Muslim girlfriend by approaching Gujarat high court .

The 23-year-old Muslim girl from the city repeatedly told the high court that she was happy with her friend from Jamnagar and wanted to stay with her only. She flatly refused to live with her parents. The HC almost failed to comprehend their relationship because they told the court that they were just friends for the last few years “in connection with the business of selling women purses”.

As the Muslim girl, whose custody the Hindu girl was seeking, is an adult she is free to decide on her own, the HC said, “Though we are not fully convinced whether the corpus’s decision is in her best interest or not, nor are we fully convinced about the reason for the petitioner to take her under her fold, being an adult person of sound mind, ultimately, the corpus has the freedom of movement which the law guarantees and which the court always protects.”

In this case, the Muslim girl had in the past written letters to the chief justice requesting for court’s intervention in freeing her from her family, where she was allegedly sexually exploited. She even sent an SOS to a city-based NGO, but refused to leave her house because of pressure from the family. A couple of months ago, she left home and moved to the NGO’s shelter home with all her belongings, sources said.

During her stay there, her friend from Jamnagar would come to see her with gifts. Administrators at the shelter home even objected to the gifts on several occasions. When the girls felt that the NGO’s staff was creating obstacles to their relationship, the girl from Jamnagar filed a habeas corpus petition in the high court and sought its intervention to free her friend.

When the HC asked the Muslim girl what was her wish, she expressed her willingness to join her friend in Jamnagar. The high court permitted her to go and live with her friend in Jamnagar. While the court kept questioning the petitioner why she was interested in keeping the city-based girl with her, the corpus told the HC that she would not go to her parents, neither would she continue to live at the shelter home. The Muslim girl on her own requested the court not to put an end on litigation and volunteered to return to court a month later and the HC may ask about her wish. Accordingly, the court summoned her on Monday to ascertain her well-being and her wish too.

The girl turned up in courtroom on Monday and reiterated that she liked to stay at Jamnagar and will continue to live there. She even told the HC that her friend was taking good care of her. The Muslims girl requested the HC to fetch her the documents that she had left at the NGO’s shelter home, but the court was reluctant to act on this request in a habeas corpus petition.

