Gurgaon court recognizes marriage between lesbians

Same-sex marriages are not legal in India. But that did not stop a Gurgaon court from effectively recognizing a marriage between two lesbians. While granting police protection to a runaway lesbian couple from Khekada village in Baghpat, additional sessions judge Vimal Kumar recorded matter-of-factly that Beena and Savita claimed to be married to each other. Their statements were recorded in the order without any indication that such a marriage had no legal status. “We have married each other on July 22, 2011 of our own free will without coercion, duress, fraud, misrepresentation etc,” it stated. The court also recorded that one of them, Savita, had earlier been married to a man and that the marriage had been dissolved by a khap panchayat in Baghpat district.