A joke doing the rounds now in Kerala’s Alappuzha town: Couples on vacation should take extra care not to attract the attention of the moralist personnel of the Kerala Police because they could book them and not even the marriage certificate would be of any help.
The joke is spreading in Alappuzha in the context of the strange incident of the police booking a man and his wife for public nuisance for just sitting on a bench on the side of one of the several canals that give Alappuzha town its sobriquet, Venice of the East.
Rajesh of Mannanchery, Alappuzha and his wife Rasmi had to appear before a local court on Thursday after they were informed on Wednesday that a case for public nuisance had been registered against them for the “crime”. Strangely, police registered the case in violation of the decision of the Home Department.
A Sub-Inspector and two civil police officers of the South Police Station, Alappuzha had verbally abused Rajesh and Rasmi in front of many onlookers for sitting together on a park bench on December 12 last. The policemen, who refused to listen to their pleas to leave them alone as they were man and wife, forcibly took them to the police station.
The officers said that they had taken the couple into custody as they were acting indecently in a public place — an argument which eye-witnesses rejected — and as the woman was not wearing any religious symbols like Mangalsutra to prove that she was married. They had to produce their marriage certificate to be freed from the police station.
As the incident instantly triggered a controversy, the Home Department intervened and decided that no case should be registered. The sub-inspector responsible was suspended. However, the couple came to know that the police were not prepared to leave them alone only when they received information about the case on Wednesday.
However, the couple learned from the Judicial Magistrate Court, Alappuzha on Thursday that a case for public nuisance had
indeed been registered against them and a lawyer had already paid the required fine though they had not engaged any lawyer for them as they had not even known about the case against them.
Following this, the court called the lawyer, who said that he was advised by someone over the phone to do what he did, generating the suspicion that the police and the
lawyer had conspired to trap the couple. The court, which has posted the case to April 24, has demanded an affidavit from the lawyer.