The police have in a Bihar town married off two lover couples at a temple after detaining them from a hotel where they had check in under fake identities.
It was learnt the couples had earlier also been booking rooms in hotels to make out secretly. But on Tuesday, they ran out of luck when they were caught during a raid on a hotel in Bhagalpur, about 235 km east of Patna.
"We had gone to the hotel in search of another runaway couple. Instead, we found these two couples registered as married couples under false names," Bhagalpur kotwali police station inspector Kanhaiya Lal told HT.
Sources said station house officer of Kotwali police station Rita Kumari convinced the lovers that the only way to escape the stigma attached with being caught in such a manner was to get married.
The twin weddings took place at the Kupeshwarnath Annapurna temple located right opposite the police station.
"It was a simple wedding ceremony performed as per Hindu rituals by temple priest Pandit Vijayanand Shastri," the official said.
"Relatives of the two couples, whom we had informed, were present at the wedding. No dowry was given or taken, making it an ideal marriage," Lal said.
Police said one couple comprised a boy from neighbouring Amarpur (Banka), who is employed with the railways, and a girl from Godda (Jharkhand), a BA student at a women's college in Bhagalpur. The two had checked into the hotel as husband and wife.
A boy from Bhagalpur and a girl from Banka formed the other couple. The girl is a younger sister of the boy's sister-in-law.