A day after reports on an interfaith marriage involving a Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) leader from Kozhikode district snowballed into a controversy over alleged references to ‘love jihad’, the Communist Party of India (Marxist) has sought to “close the chapter” saying it concerned their personal lives.
M.S. Shejin, a local committee member of the party and a DYFI block secretary in Kodenchery, and Joisna Joseph, a resident of Theyyappara, who had been working abroad as a nurse, reportedly went missing on Saturday. The woman’s parents filed a complaint with the Kodenchery police station thereafter. The local parish priest, nuns, and local residents took out protest marches to the station in subsequent days claiming that it was an example of ‘love jihad’, the theory coined by Hindutva organisations to claim that Muslim men lure women belonging to other religions to convert them.
The couple, meanwhile, appeared at a local court on Tuesday and expressed their wish to live together. Ms. Joseph also submitted that she had come out of her house on her own will.
