Delhi wedding for runaway Romeo and Juliet
A Muslim teenager who fell in love with a Hindu student on the internet has fled her home in Britain against her parents' wishes and married him in India. The clandestine affair between Subia Gaur, 18, and her boyfriend Ashwani Gupta, 22, has provoked intense media interest on the subcontinent and captured the imagination of the Indian public, who turned up in their hundreds to watch the ceremony.
The traditional Hindu wedding, which took place in Mr Gupta's home town of Ghaziabad, near Delhi, on Monday, was broadcast on television throughout India.
Miss Gaur, from Plaistow, east London, met her husband three years ago in an internet chatroom. They exchanged photographs, began talking secretly through the night and fell in love. The relationship was conducted in secret for many months before Miss Gaur travelled to India to meet Mr Gupta for the first time, on the pretence of visiting her grandparents in Bombay. "I knew the first time I met Ashwani in person that he was the one I was going to marry," she said from her new home in India. "It is hard for people to understand what we have been through. My family have put a lot of pressure on me and I didn't want to hurt them, but I had to be with the man that I love.
Posted by: john 2006-09-16 |