Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Tina Dabi, whose first short-lived marriage to a fellow officer had grabbed national headlines, is getting married again. Ms Dabi shared the news of her engagement through a picture on the photo-sharing app Instagram.
“I’m wearing the smile you gave me #fiance,” wrote Ms Dabi, who enjoys massive popularity on the social media platform with over 1.4 million followers.
She also tagged the husband-to-be – 2013-batch IAS officer Pradeep Gawande – in the picture.
Mr Gawande also shared two pictures on Instagram, they can be seen holding hands in one of them. He shared two more pictures with Ms Dabi on his Instagram stories.
Ms Dabi late last year divorced Athar Aamir Khan (IAS) from Kashmir, who she had married in 2018. The wedding made headlines and was attended by top politicians.
Tina Dabi topped the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) examination for civil services in 2015, the same year Athar Khan ranked second. Their romance and wedding were straight out of a movie script.
Ms Dabi, a graduate of Delhi’s Lady Shri Ram College, shot to the spotlight after she became the first Dalit to top the prestigious civil services exam, that too in the first attempt.
Their wedding reception in Delhi was attended by Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, Union Ministers and then Lok Sabha Speaker Sumitra Mahajan.
The interfaith wedding had generated headlines and a backlash on social media at a time the country was caught in a debate on communal discord and so-called “love jihad”, the phrase used by the rightwing to describe what they call a ruse by Muslim men to reel in Hindu women and force them to convert.
But Ms Dabi had said she was not affected by the uproar, that her marriage was above religious divides.
