“We wanted to be together but are scared of our families, so coming here was the only safe option for us,” Imran, 21, says. He and his partner, Neha, 18, were escorted by a police constable to a cramped “safe home” for runaway couples in the Ambala district of Haryana, India, at around 4:30 p.m. on a sunny day in June 2024. They had been granted police protection that morning at the Ambala district court. The couple—who met in 2023 at a wedding in Konkpur near Ambala before connecting over Instagram—had run away from their homes to marry. 

After they eloped, the couple, who are interfaith, sought the district court’s protection from their parents and broader society. Imran is a Muslim man and Neha is a Hindu woman in a country that has always frowned upon interfaith relationships, but they are even more vulnerable now due to rising religious extremism. The court instructed police to mediate between the couple and their families, leading Imran and Neha to relocate to a safe home.

A similar scenario played out for Suhana Begum*, a Muslim woman who lived with her family in Bharog, also near Ambala. Her parents forcibly confined her to their house in 2019 after she told them she loved a Hindu man named Rajiv Saini* and wanted to marry him, despite the difference in their religious backgrounds. 

“We met at my aunt’s wedding where he worked as a DJ operator,” Begum, who is 32, says. “He gave me his number through friends, and a few months later we started talking to each other.” But when her family discovered their relationship, they held her captive to prevent her from communicating with Saini. “For two years, we couldn’t speak to each other, let alone see each other,” she says. Since their villages are close to one another, she would hear news of his well-being from mutual contacts. 

After being confined for four years, Begum persuaded her family to allow her to join a polytechnic school in the village so she could enroll in a grooming and beauty course. That’s when the couple decided to elope and seek refuge at the Ambala safe home, where they would both have police protection.  

Begum joined Arya Samaj, a Hindu temple that conducts legally valid Vedic wedding ceremonies without elaborate rituals or caste restrictions, and converted to Hinduism in order to marry Saini. “Our parents were upset with us when we ran away from our homes,” she says. “We were scared that they might come after us, so we decided to seek legal help. One of Rajiv’s friends had also had an intercaste marriage, so he helped us get married and get police protection in the safe home.” 

Begum says she endured taunts and mockery from Saini’s village community and his family for being a Muslim. “But eventually, everyone calmed down,” she shares. “We moved to Ambala right after we got married. … Initially, it was difficult to get everyone to love us and respect us. But slowly, they have come to terms with our marriage. Everyone in his family calls me Khushi since I changed my name to Khushboo after our wedding.” 

Begum and Saini never considered religion a barrier to their love. Now, even her own family agrees that Saini is the best partner for their daughter. “It doesn’t matter that his religion is different,” she says. “He is a good person, so I fell in love with him.”

How Haryana Became the First Indian State With Safe Homes

In the early 2000s, people in Haryana scorned and actively attacked intercaste and interfaith couples, as well as couples from the same Gotra (clan), village, or adjoining villages because these were considered incestuous relationships. Their resistance to these couples helped give rise to honor-based killings. The families of these interfaith and intercaste couples—or an unlawful village council, called a Khap Panchayat—socially ostracized, harmed, or killed their relatives for wanting to marry people of their own choosing rather than those chosen by their families. 

Thanks to concerted efforts from social activists, socially conscious law-enforcing agents, and the judiciary, in 2010 the High Court of Punjab and Haryana directed police in Haryana and Punjab and the union territory of Chandigarh to create operational safe homes for runaway couples. Since Haryana had a deeply entrenched tradition of honor killing those involved in self-choice marriages, the then Haryana government became the first state to establish these safe homes.

Jagmati Sangwan, a member of All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA) and an active campaigner for safe homes, remembers how the honor killings of several couples pushed AIDWA to call for safe homes, an idea favored by Haryana’s government at the time. 

“These safe homes have been instrumental in saving so many couples from being mercilessly killed, and it allows space for runaway couples to rebuild themselves to face society together,” says Sangwan. However, as Sangwan notes, “After the safe homes were formed in Haryana, we pushed for a law against honor killing, but that was never enacted.” 

It is difficult to ascertain accurate data on honor killings because they are grossly underreported, and in most cases, the families of the couples, the Khaps, and the village community hide such killings until they are reported by the media. “The bride’s parents faced a lot of social pressure, so they would coax the newlywed couple to come to the village and meet them,”  says Vikas Narain Rai, retired deputy general of law and order of Haryana. “That’s when they would kill them, or if they see them in the market then they would murder them.” 

In 2000, United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) conducted a study that estimated that as many as 5,000 girls and women lose their lives to honor killings around the world each year, though some nongovernmental organizations estimate that there are as many as 20,000 honor killings worldwide each year. By June 2024, Haryana had already reported three honor killings with one in the Jind, Sirsa, and Hisar districts, respectively.

Given these statistics, Rai explains there has been a “barrage of petitions from young couples seeking police protection,” so “the High Court ordered that the couples be given protection in the initial period until the pressure from their families is tapered and they can figure out their life forward.”

Hindu Supremacy’s Influence on Interfaith Couples

Aside from social disapproval of self-choice marriages, India is seeing a growing trend of brutal attacks on interfaith couples, particularly Hindu–Muslim couples, by Hindu supremacists and Bajrang Dal members—the youth wing of the Sangh Parivar, which is the ideological branch of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. “The opposition against interfaith marriages has become more aggressive than ever before,” Rai says. “It’s gone beyond the families in the current scenario.”

Ashutosh Kumar* married Alfia,* a Muslim woman, in June 2023 after meeting on Instagram and feeling instantly connected. They lived less than one mile apart from each other, so they decided to run away from their families to seek protection in the Ambala safe home for seven days. Now, nearly two years later, Alfia’s parents don’t speak with them, though Kumar’s parents were on board with the marriage.

“We were in a relationship for about two and a half years before we ran away to get married,” Kumar shares. “I’d started saving up money for a year because I knew she would call me any day to say that she had run away from her house and then I’d have to run too.”

When the two landed at the Ambala safe house, Alfia had nothing with her. However, Kumar had taken a friend’s advice and withdrew more than $175 (Rs15000 in his own currency) from his bank account, so they were able to begin rebuilding their lives. “One doesn’t need phones to pass the time,” Kumar says. “We were accompanied by five [other] couples, so everyone would share their stories, and that’s how we spent our time away from everyone at the safe home.” The couple made friends with others in similar circumstances. “We continue to stay connected,” he says.

The couple eventually left the safe home and married at Arya Samaj temple, after which they stayed with different relatives and friends for more than a month before returning to Kumar’s home. However, it wasn’t a smooth journey for the couple, as Alfia’s parents kept intimidating and invoking fear among Kumar’s family and distressing the couple. 

Meanwhile, Kumar benefited from being a Hindu man marrying a Muslim woman and was able to gain a Bajrang Dal member’s support. When the scenario is reversed and Hindu woman marries a Muslim man, right-wing agents call the pairing a “love jihad,” an unverified conspiracy theory in India that alleges Muslim men lure Hindu women into relationships to convert them to Islam.  

Asif Iqbal, founder of Dhanak for Humanity, a nongovernmental organization that helps interfaith couples register and legalize their marriage without religious conversion, says it has become an increasingly common practice for Hindu men marrying Muslim women to approach a right-wing organization and persuade them into intimidating their families into accepting the marriage.

Runaway Couples in Haryana

Between 2018 and 2021, 10,736 couples took advantage of the shelter offered by safe homes. A female guard at one of Haryana’s safe homes tells YES! that most couples consist of young women between the ages of 18 and 21 while most of the young men are between the ages of 21 and 24. “The highest numbers are that of intercaste [couples,] but interfaith couples also come, and about 10% are from the general category or same-caste couples,” says the guard, who asked to remain anonymous. “Once the couples arrive at the safe home, they are not allowed to step out even to the verandah of the building but they are free to roam around inside. We are responsible for them so we have to ensure their safety.”

Couples from the neighboring state of Rajasthan also use safe homes in Haryana because there are none in their state. However, as more couples seek safety in these homes, the homes themselves are facing a major funding challenge. As a police superintendent who asked to remain anonymous explains, “The police department doesn’t have an additional budget for the maintenance of the safe home.”

There is a 2018 apex court directive for all 22 Indian states to implement safe homes. As a result, there are such facilities in Punjab, Maharashtra, and New Delhi. However, neither the state governments nor the central government has passed a law to implement the directive. 

In current-day India where interfaith unions are increasingly under state-sanctioned assault, Dhanak for Humanity’s Iqbal points out the need for political will to be used to expand Haryana’s model and make safe homes a part of the legal system across the country. “The future for safe homes is bleak, and it will continue to be a makeshift arrangement unless an act is brought in to formalize it,” he adds.

Despite the challenges, safe homes are critical to the security of runaway couples and help reduce incidents of honor killing in Haryana. “Safe homes are a very good thing for couples like us,” Kumar concludes. “People should not look at love marriages negatively. Whether parents choose or the boy and girl choose, ultimately, it is the couple who have to live together, right?”

* The names of some people have been changed to safeguard them from potential abuse and harassment.