In what many are calling a real-life Bollywood movie script, an Indian man married his wife to her lover after catching them cheating.

In the 1999 Bollywood classic Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam, Ajay Devgn’s character, Vanraj, finds out that his wife is in love with another man and decides to unite them. It’s one of India’s most famous love stories and one that was recently replicated by a scorned husband who, upon learning about his wife’s infidelity, arrange the union of the spouse to her lover. The unusual incident took place in Nardiganj, a village in India’s Bihar state after villagers caught a young married woman visiting the home of her lover while her husband was away. They beat the man, who was also married with three children and had decided to drive the pair from their village, but then the woman’s husband returned and came up with another solution.

Photo: Vaibhav Nagare/Unsplash

Apparently, the unnamed couple had been married for only a few days when the husband learned about his young bride’s infidelity, and despite trying to talk her into giving up her lover, she never did. They had two children in the three years they were married, but the woman’s heart still belonged to her lover, who was married and had kids of his own.

There was talk of the woman’s infidelity in Nardiganj, and during her latest visit to her beloved’s house, her husband’s in-laws caught her red-handed in the arms of her lover. The angry villagers beat up the man for cheating on his wife and breaking up the woman’s marriage as well, and they took the couple hostage until the woman’s husband returned from his work trip.

Photo: video screengrab

When the cheated husband returned and learned about his wife’s infidelity, he surprisingly disagreed with the villagers’ decision to drive the two adulterers away from the village as punishment. Instead, he took them both to a local temple and made the lover marry his wife, claiming that he was in no position to stop the woman from being with the man she loved just because she was married.

A video that has since gone viral shows the two lovers performing the unifying ritual in front of a crowd. The man, sporting a white vest and a visibly swollen eye, applies vermillion to his lover’s forehead, as she cries uncontrollably. It’s unclear whether the woman’s tears are tears of happiness or of shame…

 

Believe it or not, this is not the first something like this has happened in India. A couple of years ago, we wrote about another Bihar man who helped his wife marry the man she loved.