If it stops being safe
What to do, in order, when opposition turns into being confined, followed, threatened, or reported missing by your own family. Worth reading before you need it.
Most families who object never go beyond argument. Some do. This page is for that case, and the time to read it is before rather than during.
If you are being confined, or your phone is being taken
- Tell one person outside the house where you are, while you still can.
- Move your identity documents somewhere you can reach without asking — Aadhaar, PAN, passport, degree certificates, and your marriage certificate if you have one.
- Agree a plain sentence with that one person that means “come and get me”, so you can send it from any phone.
If your family files a missing-person complaint
This happens often and it frightens people who have done nothing wrong. An adult who has left home has not been abducted. The Supreme Court dealt with exactly this in Laxmibai Chandaragi B. v. State of Karnataka in 2021, and gave police directions on handling such complaints — including recording the adult’s own statement rather than pursuing the couple. Do not respond by going further underground. Get your statement recorded, and get a lawyer.
If you are being threatened
Shakti Vahini requires states to run a district cell for this and to make a safe house available. Couples also go straight to the High Court for a protection order; it is an ordinary, well-worn petition and lawyers who do this work file them regularly. Neither route requires you to be married first.
Worth doing early, while nothing has happened
- Keep a dated note of what is said and by whom. It is unpleasant to write and it is the difference between a complaint and a story.
- Keep copies of documents somewhere outside the house.
- Know which police station covers where you are, and which High Court.
- Have one person who is not in either family and who knows the whole situation.
This site also has a quick way out of any page and does not keep what you write where a search engine can find it. That is on the safety page, along with what the platform can and cannot see.
This is where the people are
Reading is the easy half. Writing your own situation down — privately, visible to nobody until you say otherwise — is what puts you in reach of people who have already had the conversation you are dreading.
