Agra love story: Out of asylum, into wedlock

“I never thought I would be married in this manner. I had thought of a usual wedding with a baraat, a band and relatives. I never thought that a judge would conduct an oath-taking ceremony which would mean I am married,” Sarika, dressed in a beige and red salwar kurta, said.

She was brought to the collectorate directly from the Agra Mental Asylum where the two were sent on June 27.

Trouble for them began soon after they filed an application for marriage in the magistrate’s office. This was on June 6. On June 9, Sarika’s elder brother Siddhartha pressured her to withdraw the application and to announce that she was mentally disturbed, which influenced her decision to marry Pankaj Sharma.

Siddhartha even told the court that Pankaj Sharma was already married. On June 22, however, Sarika, appearing before the ADM, Shamim Ahmed Khan, recorded her statement for the second time. This time she said she wanted to marry Sharma and had been pressured to say that they both were mentally unstable.

ADM Khan ordered that the two be put under medical observation. Even as a preliminary report filed by the asylum on June 25 said the couple were “mentally stable and normal,” Khan referred the case to the judicial magistrate, who on June 27, asked that the two be kept under observation for 10 days.

On Saturday afternoon, however, a report from Dr Ravendra Singh Chauhan, medical superintendent, Institute of Mental Health and Hospital, Agra, heading the three-member board looking into the case, saved the day for them. It declared that the two ‘‘are normal according to the till date observation.” Khan also ordered Siddhartha to pay Rs 1,000 as fine.

The couple later sought to put the past behind, saying, nobody in either of the families was responsible for what happened. It was the future that engaged them.

‘‘We will be going to Vaishno Devi at the earliest and will take up other things after that,” said a smiling Sharma, as he received his marriage certificate.

Later in the evening, the couple reached Sharma’s house. Other than the police escorts provided by the courts, there was the quintessential band and a small procession. For family members eagerly waiting at home, it was ‘‘a regular welcome with an aarti and a tilak and a visit to the local temple later,” as Chotelal Sharma, Pankaj’s father, put it.

Sharma’s family members said the couple would soon shift to Kamla Nagar where they had taken up a room.