New Delhi:

Two women married in Uttar Pradesh’s Kannauj, but only after one of them changed her gender to avoid societal hurdles and defamation.

Ranu and Jyoti got married with great pomp and their families’ blessings in Kannauj’s Sadar Kotwali, after the former spent around Rs 7 lakh to change her gender.

Shivangi, the daughter of Indra Gupta, met Jyoti at her father’s jewellery shop. Jyoti asked her for a shop on rent to open a beauty parlour, after which the latter gave a room on rent to the former. The duo grew closer and eventually decided to get married as two women.

However, the family’s fear of social disgrace over a same-sex marriage led the couple to decide that Shivangi will undergo a gender change. She consulted doctors in Lucknow and Delhi and then underwent gender change operations, after which she changed her named from Shivangi to Ranu.

Even as the fourth and final operation in the gender change process remains pending, the couple got their families’ blessings and tied the knot on November 25.

A woman, with her head shaved and hands and legs tied, is sitting on a log of wood with her husband hitting her repeatedly on her thighs and back with a wooden stick in front of a small crowd, shows a disturbing video from Uttar Pradesh.

The incident, reportedly five days old but now in wide circulation, is from a village in Kannauj, some 122 km from state capital Lucknow.

Six people have been arrested in the case, said police.

“A video of a woman being beaten is being shared. The man seen beating in the video is the husband of a woman. Six people have been arrested and an inquiry is underway,” said Amit Kumar Anand, Superintendent of Police, Kannauj.

The woman, whose name is being withheld to protect her identity, had complained that her nephew was harassing her.

Hearing the matter, a village panchayat ordered that the woman and nephew’s head be shaved as punishment. The woman’s husband was ordered to beat her publicly.

“Jabardasti kata unhone (They cut my hair forcefully),” said the woman, who covered her head with a dupatta.

A shorn head is heavy with meaning. It is deployed to both dehumanise and punish.

(With inputs from Israil Khan)

Kannauj:

Samajwadi Party chief Akhilesh Yadav, who is contesting today from the Kannauj Lok Sabha seat, says he is secure in the support of Dalits, that came to the party when it had tied up with Mayawati’s Bahujan Samaj Party in 2019. In contrast, the BJP, he implied, despises the so-called lower castes.

“When I went to a temple, the BJP got it washed,” he said, referring to the BJP workers’ purification ceremony at the Gauri Shankar Mahadev Mandir of Kannauj after his visit. A video of the purification ceremony was widely circulated in social media and the incident had provided boost to the SP efforts to weave a rainbow support group of voters at the constituency.

“Today, the fight is big. Today, the BJP wants to change the Constitution which taught us how to live… They will do so if they get 400 seats,” Mr Yadav said, underscoring what has become the Opposition’s biggest allegation.

Mr Yadav has returned to Kannauj to reclaim an old family bastion — his father Mulayam Singh Yadav had nurtured the constituency for years. But the seat went to the BJP in 2019 and sitting MP and perfume trader Subrat Pathak is out to defend it. The battle is seen as the centrepiece of today’s election in Uttar Pradesh as voting is being held on nine other seats.

The fight will be triangular with the BSP fielding Imran Bin Zafar.
“Kannauj parliamentary constituency has taught me the ABCD of politics… I grew in politics in Kannauj,” Mr Yadav said today, referring to his political debut from the seat in 2000.

The fight for Kannauj will be the first Lok Sabha battle for the SP chief in a long time. In 2022, he had resigned his Azamgarh Lok Sabha seat and retained the assembly seat from Karhal.

Mr Pathak has been a repeat contestant from the seat since 2009 and ended the SP’s 35-year dream run at the constituency after a decade in 2019. His opponent was Dimple Yadav, the wife of the SP chief.

Reminding voters of the old times, Mr Yadav said, “People of Kannauj know how much development took place when Samajwadi Party was in power and why development is not happening here today… We gave world class infrastructure to Kannauj, built the world’s best roads… built a market”.