KOCHI:After the landmark Supreme Court verdict decriminalising homosexuality, the Kerala High Court on Monday granted permission to a 40-year-old woman to go along with her 24-year-old female lover and live together.
The court passed the order while allowing the habeas corpus petition filed by S Sreeja, West Kallada, Kollam, who is working in a Gulf country. She was seeking a directive to the police to produce her lover Aruna, from Thiruvananthapuram, before the court.
The petitioner alleged that her female lover was under the illegal detention of her parents. She had been mentally and physically tortured and even admitted to the mental hospital alleging that she was mentally ill. The petitioner also cited the SC verdict which decriminalised all consensual sex among adults in private, including homosexual sex. The court allowed both of them to go together.
Before passing the order, the court interacted with Aruna, who was produced before the court by the police. Sreeja submitted that they intended to live together as partners. Aruna had come to live with Sreeja on her own volition on August 13. The parents of Aruna then lodged a complaint with the police alleging that their daughter was missing. She was later produced before the Neyyattinakara Judicial First Class Magistrate who set her at liberty.