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Women in Love in Bangladesh

Lipika Pelham investigates a marriage between two Bengali women, and asks what this extraordinary love story says about attitudes to sexuality in this conservative nation.

Sanjida, a 20-year-old Muslim student was hired as a tutor for Puja, a 16-year-old Hindu girl in a sleepy town in south-west Bangladesh. To the horror of Puja鈥檚 parents the girls fell in love, eloped and got married outside a Hindu temple by exchanging garlands of flowers.

Shortly after that the police tracked them down and the officer in charge said he was 鈥渟tunned to discover this was a lesbian case.鈥� Sanjida was arrested and she spent several months in police custody charged with kidnapping. Lipika Pelham investigates this lesbian love story and asks what it says about attitudes to sexuality in this conservative majority Muslim South Asian nation.

(Photo: The lovehouse where Sanjida and Puja started out their married lives together)

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23 minutes

Last on

Mon 1 Feb 2016 06:06GMT
大象传媒 World Service East Asia

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