Desmond is a second-generation African traveling with an EU passport.
He fell in love with Irom Sharmila even without meeting her.
He first came to know about Irom Sharmila through a book titled “Burning Bright” by Deepti Priya Mehrotra. He was moved by Irom Sharmila’s struggle described in the book.
He started writing letters to Sharmila and since then, the two got involved in exchanging letters regularly. Among the things, he sent her were a Radha-Krishna painting and a teddy bear.
In February 2011, he visited Imphal for the first time and finally managed to meet her on 9 March 2011 at a court.
When The Telegraph (the eastern Indian daily) published an interview with Sharmila in which Sharmila said that she loved Coutinho, it caused a furor in Manipur.
On 17 August 2017, he got married to Irom Sharmila under the Special Marriage Act in Kodaikanal in Tamil Nadu. The couple started living together in Tamil Nadu’s Kodaikanal.
