India's morality police target unmarried couples in hotel rooms

On Sunday, Mumbai's police chief announced that he has ordered an investigation into raids on hotels and lodges in the city's suburbs in which unmarried couples were pulled out of their rooms and accused of "indecent public behavior."

According to the Hindu newspaper, many of those found in the rooms were students, and some reports say that a number of women were made to call up their parents. Thirteen couples were apprehended, though all were released after a few hours in custody and the payment of a fine amounting to $18.

There is no law against unmarried couples sharing a hotel room in India. The Supreme Court has said that live-in relationships between unmarried couples are neither a crime nor a sin in the country. Indian laws offer a broad remit for police officers investigating prostitution, however, which may have allowed the officers in this case to raid the rooms. And hotels often refuse rooms to unmarried couples.

In India, many view the raids as just another example of what has been called "moral policing," whereby conservative groups impose strict moral codes on the population. In recent years, this has been blamed for a sometimes-violent backlash against Valentine's Day and an attempt to ban Internet pornography.

Speaking to the Indian Express newspaper, one hotel owner complained that the police officers never identified themselves and did little to explain what the raid was about. "They raided my hotel at 4 pm and didn't leave until 7 pm. My guests were humiliated," Harish Shetty, owner of Mantra Residency, said. "They were asked to come to the compound and then questioned for hours as if they were terrorists."

Police say that they raided the hotels in the Madh Island and Aksa Beach area after an "unverified" tip-off about prostitution.

"I am not a prostitute," one 21-year-old woman told the newspaper Mid-Day. "I am an adult who was out with my fiance, who I am supposed to marry next month, to find some privacy."