In a modest two-bedroom apartment in a quiet residential neighbourhood in Karnataka, a framed photograph of a couple locked in an embrace hangs on a wall. Seated below it, Nithya, 20, speaks with composure: “At 16, I didn’t know falling in love would come at a price,” she says.
She met Rajesh when she was still in school. He was four years older. His family had recently moved into the neighbourhood, renting a house a few blocks away. “As clichéd as it sounds, it was love at first sight,” she recalls, a faint smile flickering across her face.
Supreme Court flags misuse of POCSO Act to penalise adolescent relationships, mulls directions to raise awareness
But her parents opposed the relationship from the moment they found out. “He belonged to a different caste. It wasn’t something they could look past,” she says. As a child, she had been discouraged from even befriending children from other castes. “So I expected resistance,” she adds. “But I was naïve enough to believe they would eventually relent.”
When she refused to end the relationship, punishment followed. “I would be beaten for days at a stretch,” she says, her shoulders stiffening at the memory. “My mother would lock me in my room. Sometimes I wasn’t even given food.” She had no way of reaching Rajesh. “But what kept me going,” she says quietly, “was my love for him.”
