The founder of a celebrated Indian non-governmental organization that provides shelter to couples in interfaith or intercaste relationships has been arrested on suspicion of extorting and confining people in his care.
Love Commandos, cofounded by activist Sanjoy Sachdev in 2010, has been the subject of international documentaries and celebrity fundraising campaigns for its work providing safe houses to Indian couples at risk of being murdered by their families in so-called “honor killings.”
It has reportedly rescued thousands of couples who have been threatened by their families for falling in love with someone outside their caste or religion, or who are rejected by their parents for other reasons.
Police on Tuesday commenced a criminal investigation against 58-year-old Sachdev on allegations of extortion, intimidation and confinement. He was arrested outside the organization’s shelter in Delhi.
The arrest followed a raid on the shelter by the Delhi Commission for Women.
“Two women came to us complaining and crying,” commission Chairwoman Swati Maliwal said on Wednesday. “We visited the shelter home and found it in a horrible condition.”
Two couples on the premises had claimed that their identity documents had been taken away, and that they have been forced work and asked to provide money, she said.
“They were told: ‘If you leave, we’ll call your parents and tell them your whereabouts,’” Maliwal said.
The couples accused Sachdev of drinking alcohol on the premises and pressuring the men to join in, she said.
Sachdev has yet to be presented before court. His lawyers have been approached for comment.
Abuse and poor conditions have been discovered at dozens of shelter homes across India in the past year, sparking protests and calls for better regulation.
The Love Commandos shelter was not registered under any legislation and was not subject to inspections, Maliwal said.
However, neither the state nor the central governments have provided any shelters for couples fleeing their families, leaving the commission in a bind, she said.
“It was very complicated for us yesterday [Tuesday], because we rescued these couples — who have been the subject of direct threats of honor killings from their families. We didn’t know where to send them,” she said. “There is no other shelter home.”
There were 69 honor killings in India in 2016, the most recent year for which data is available, Indian National Crime Records Bureau statistics showed.
However, the true rate is thought to be much higher, exacerbated by deeply patriarchal values and strong community systems based on caste and religion.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of