![]() "Bollywood is just a three-hour hunky-dory thing. "No movie matches our story," Zarina once told me. His rise and fall is the topic of an NPR podcast I've spent the past five years reporting called Love Commandos. ![]() He denies that, and is still awaiting trial. In early 2019, months after my visit, the group's founder, Sanjoy Sachdev, was arrested for allegedly extorting money from couples in his care. This was a shelter run by the Love Commandos, a vigilante group that helps Indians avoid arranged marriages, rescues them from possible harm at the hands of their families - even including so-called honor killings - and helps them elope with a partner of their own choosing. They told me truncated versions of their love stories, glossing over the violence they'd escaped and emphasizing the relief they felt at reaching relative safety. When I turned on my microphone, they were courteous, if curt. The lovers - four couples - blinked in the light when I opened the door. The mint-green walls were streaked with handprints and grime. They crowded cross-legged onto foam floor mats in a windowless room, their knees touching. NEW DELHI - Five years ago, up a steep staircase in a seedy part of India's capital, I met eight beleaguered young lovers. Getty Images and NPR/Photo illustration: Vartika Sharma for NPR Saumil and Zarina sit on the floor at the Love Commandos shelter in New Delhi.
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