Indian couple trolled over skin colour after wedding video goes viral

 Rajput and Sonali Chouksey met in college 11 years ago, fell in love and married last month.

Photos and videos from their colourful wedding showed the happy couple from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh performing rituals and posing in their finery.

But when they shared their happiest moment on social media, the congratulatory messages came peppered with “jokes and memes” with trolls comparing and criticising the couple over the groom’s skin colour.

The trolls did not spare the bride either, with many suggesting she had married him “for his money”.

“She must have had some compulsion,” one wrote. Another suggested she couldn’t be happy with a husband like that. Some labelled her a “gold-digger,” claiming she married him for wealth or a secure government job with perks. One comment suggested that Mr Rajput’s father must be “a government minister”.

The couple, who married on 23 November, have since gone viral because of the trolling – and their response, as they addressed the criticism head-on. They have been sought out by local media and given scores of interviews in the past two weeks.

“People were making jokes and memes and it felt very wrong,” Mr Rajput told BBC Hindi from his home in Jabalpur.

“It was our moment and we had waited for it so many years. It was supposed to be a happy moment, but when I saw people’s reactions, I was really shocked,” he said.