The police in Kochi, Kerala have registered a case against a Hindu charitable trust following a complaint by a 26-year-old woman on Monday, alleging that she was forcibly detained at the yoga centre near Tripunithura, physically and mentally tortured for marrying a Christian man. While the police have reportedly arrested one person, while the four yoga teachers at the Yoga Vidya Kendra are absconding.
In an affidavit filed in the Kerala High Court, the complainant identified as Dr Shweta has said that over 60 Hindu women who had married men from other religions were similarly illegally detained, some of them for long periods. Dr Shweta who managed to escape from the centre filed her affidavit in support of a habeas corpus petition filed earlier by her 29-yearold husband from Thrissur, Rinto Isaac.
According to Dr Shweta, a young woman, Athira from Kasaragod, who had chosen to convert to Islam on her own who recently ‘returned’ to ‘Sanatana dharma’ with much fanfare, was in this place for twenty-two days and that she had continued to insist on her preference for Islam.
Shweta and Isaac who married following Hindu ceremony at a temple subsequently registered their marriage under the Special Marriages Act.
According to a report in the Times of India, Dr Shweta was forced by her parents to go to the centre for “counseling”. She told the Times of India that at the centre her hands were often bound and the “counseling” was limited to pointing out the pitfalls of Christianity and Islam.
“We were forced to sleep on the floor of dormitories and the doors of bathrooms did not have locks. There were [those] who had [been] confined for years… Most of the inmates were ill all around but no treatment was given,” Dr Shweta said in her affidavit.
The yoga centre evidently functioned as a torture camp to ensure the ‘ghar wapsi’ of Hindu women who marry men from other religions. Some years ago, similar kidnap and illegal detention centre was being run in Gujarat from girls from the Patel caste who married outside her caste or community.
The Udayamperoor panchayat has issued a closure notice to the Yoga Vidya Kendra run by one Manoj, alias ‘Guruji’.
The story was first broken by the Malayalee news channel Media One.