CHENNAI: Anything for love. A 22-year-old asked his girlfriend for a kiss on Valentine’s Day. She told him he’d have to earn it. How? Walk down from a street at Royapettah to the Marina wearing a burqa , where she would be waiting to give him his reward.So on Tuesday night, the youth, identified by the police as Shakthivel from Pattabiram who studies at an ITI, finally got his courage up and donned a burqa he had borrowed from his girlfriend and set out from Royapettah. So far so good. But his luck ran out when he neared the Ice House.That’s when Rizwan, 40 who was sipping tea at a stall at Vasudevapuram noticed a ‘burqa-clad woman’ crossing the stretch thrice.Rizwan thought there was something odd about the way the ‘woman’ walked. The shades the person wore added to Rizwan’s suspicions. He followed the person and noticed the ‘woman’ was wearing men’s footwear.Rizwan alerted people in the locality and they all decided he must be a thief in disguise out to break into homes in the locality, police said.The residents confronted the ‘woman’ and removed the burqa to reveal Shakthivel.The crowd questioned the lovesick youth but he didn’t tell them why he was in a burqa, only pleading his innocence. So they gave him a real thrashing and handed him over to the Ice House police station, saying they suspected he was a thief.It’s when the police interrogated him that the real story tumbled out.Shakthivel told them he had met this girl some six months ago at a training camp for job aspirants.They had kept in touch and he had fallen in love with her. So only Valentine’s Day, he asked her for a kiss. She refused and instead asked him to walk down the road from her house in Royapettah to Marina Beach on Tuesday night.The girl promised to kiss him on the beach if he completed the task. She did not accompany him, but was waiting for him at the beach, police said.Police let Shakthivel go after an inquiry. We don’t know if his girlfriend consoled him with a kiss.

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