Police Violence In India Drives A Gay Couple To The U.S.

Police Violence In India Drives A Gay Couple To The U.S.

Millions of gay Indians suddenly became criminals when the Indian Supreme Court restored the country’s sodomy law in December. But the ruling actually helped set one couple free.

When the ruling was issued, two men from northwest India had spent more than six months in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in El Paso, Texas, waiting for a judge to decide on their petition for asylum. It was a bitter ending to their yearlong journey across more than 10 countries to reach the United States. They had left India after death threats from their family and being targeted for police abuse because of their sexual orientation, though at the time the law criminalizing same-sex relationships was suspended by a lower court ruling. And when they finally reached the country that they expected to protect their rights, they wound up in a facility that felt exactly like prison.

The whole experience had felt cruelly backward to the couple, so it was perhaps fitting that the U.S. released them from detention only when they formally became criminals at home.

A U.S. judge granted the pair asylum on Dec. 20 based on their experience of police abuse and threats from their families to kill them if they returned. But even now they don’t feel that much safer than when they left India, which is why they only agreed to speak to BuzzFeed under names they chose for themselves, Manoj and Maninder, rather than their real names....

(full story):

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lesterfeder/a-gay-couple-flees-police-violence-in-india-only-to-wind-up