Reacting to an incident of moral policing in Kolam district of Kerala, Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan had directed the state DGP to take strict action against the practice. “Nobody has been given the right to manhandle and assault the public in any circumstance,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

A couple of police officers from the Museum station in Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram might not have been privy to that information. On Tuesday, according to a News Minute report, a couple sitting in a garden were accosted by two police officers, who, on realising they were unmarried, told them that this behaviour was vulgar.

At this point, the couple turned the tables by recording the incident on a phone and going on Facebook live video with it. They asked the police officers what was vulgar about their actions. While the couple said no answer was given, one of the officers can he heard saying in the video: “We’ll inform your parents and see what needs to be done, whether to marry you off or not. Otherwise, all this is not permitted here.”

The couple was eventually taken to a police station and then let off.