A MUSLIM schoolgirl fled her home in London to travel to India to marry the Hindu boy she met on the internet.
The extraordinary tale of Subia Gaur - a modern day equivalent of Romeo and Juliet - has captured the imagination of the Indian public and the wedding was broadcast on television throughout the subcontinent.
More than 1,000 people turned up uninvited to the ceremony and there is talk of a film deal.
Ms Gaur's family tried to prevent the wedding going ahead, lodging a claim with local police that she had been abducted. She, in turn, claims her family issued death threats against her and her husband because she was marrying a Hindu.
Ms Gaur, 18, from Plaistow, met her husband Ashwani Gupta through an internet chatroom two years ago.
They conducted a clandestine affair via email that culminated in her marriage to Mr Gupta on Monday in a traditional ceremony-in his home town of Ghaziabad, near Delhi.
Ms Gaur, at her new home in India, told the Evening Standard: "I knew the first time I met Ashwani in person that he was the one I was going to marry.
It's hard for people to understand what we've been through.
My family have put a lot of pressure on me and I didn't want to hurt them, but I had to be with the man that I love.
"Religion doesn't matter. I'm Muslim and he is Hindu. I'm not converting and he doesn't want me to. Ashwani and his family have accepted me for who I am."
Since April 2004, Ms Gaur and Mr Gupta have spent hours conversing by computer in a mixture of Hindi and English.
Ms Gaur met her husband face to-face for the first time in April after travelling to India to visit her grandparents in Mumbai.
Mr Gupta made the 700-mile journey from Delhi to see her.
She returned to London where she was studying A-levels at sixth form college, telling only a few close friends, but her parents learned of her affair.
She says they put her under intense pressure to end the relationship because, she claims, they had planned an arranged marriage with a Muslim once she had finished her studies.
On 17 August she secretly took a flight to Delhi. Her mother, discovering she had gone, took a flight the next day to persuade her to come home. Ms Gaur claims she and Mr Gupta, 21, who is studying to be a financial analyst, spent the next month in hiding until the wedding. They had police protection for several weeks after they claimed they had received death threats.
Ms Gaur said: "I knew they would never accept Ashwani so I decided to go to India. I came here in April and they took me back forcefully, but then I came in August without telling anyone. We thought if we got married they wouldn't be able to take me back. I haven't had any contact with my friends or my younger brother and sister. It's been very stressful and we had to go into hiding for a while."
Her grandparents lodged a claim that she had been abducted against her will in a last-ditch attempt to prevent the wedding. But local police allowed the service to go ahead after interviewing Ms Gaur.
Speaking at home in London, Abdul Gaur, 46, in f loods of tears, said the first he and his wife knew about the wedding was when he tuned into an Indian satellite TV channel.
Shop manager Mr Gaur, who moved to the UK in 1999, denied his family had made threats to kidnap or even murder Ms Gaur.
Mr Gaur said: "She is part of my body, my firstborn child and it is madness to say that we could harm her in any way. I believe she has been brainwashed.
She doesn't understand what she has done.
"She is a Muslim above all and she has married a Hindu and that is the most shocking thing about this, not that she has lied to us and married against our wishes. We love her and have brought her up and it is very bad that people in India can accuse us of intending to harm her."
He branded the internet "evil" and said his new son-in-law was only interested in getting a British passport. "While we slept at night this evil came into our home and has led to our daughter running away and marrying a Hindu boy," he said.
The marriage has divided opinion in India, with newspapers and television giving it a huge amount of space. Some applaud the couple for daring to bridge the religious divide.
Others have castigated Ms Gaur for marrying so young and upsetting her parents.
Ms Gaur said: "I was a normal 18-year-old Londoner before this.
I never wanted the attention.
"I couldn't believe 1,000 people turned up uninvited to the wedding because they saw our story on the news. But if there is someone in my position I hope my story gives them the courage to follow their heart."
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