Two Women Who Were In A Relationship Commit Suicide Over Fears Of Forced Separation By Family

In September 2018, the Supreme Court of India in a landmark scrapped section 377, a colonial-era rule under which gay sex is categorised as an "unnatural offence" and held that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a fundamental violation of rights.

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While it is no more a crime in the eyes of law, a large section of the country still looks at same-sex relations with scorn. More often than not families try to cover it up and get them married to a heterosexual partner on the belief that it will change their sexual orientation.

This, however, doesn't help them and at times can have disastrous consequences.

In a tragic incident, two women, from Namakkal, Tamil Nadu ended their lives on Saturday. They feared they would be separated after the family of one of them fixed her marriage.

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The two women have been identified as Jothi and Priya. Jothi was a married woman and had a three-year-old daughter. She had separated from her husband two years ago. Recently she had started working at a power loom where she met Priya. Both the women became close friends, which the police say developed into a same-sex relationship.

But troubles began after Priya's family fixed her marriage, for later this month. The duo was upset over the development and feared that they won't be able to meet each other after the marriage.

On Saturday, Priya had gone to Jothi's house, and after some time when her brother went there looking for her, he found the house locked from inside. Since there was no response from inside he started looking around and through a window found them hanging from the ceiling. Police have registered a case into the death and have began a probe.

AFP

The deaths came just a few days after a similar incident in Goa, where a 21-year-old girl from Kerala committed suicide, allegedly over mistreatment by the family over her sexual orientation. Anjana Hareesh, also known as Chinnu Sulfikar, an openly bisexual student was found dead in Goa, where she had gone with her friends in mid-March.

Last month she had posted a video on her Facebook page, in which she narrated the ordeal that she had to go through after she came out a bisexual. In the video, she had alleged that her family had sent her to a conversion therapy to cure her condition. She had alleged that the therapy and the medicines had taken a toll on her and that she could not even see or talk properly.