Great escape for child bride

A day after she was rescued by the childline officials and sent to the Government Children’s Home for Girls in Nimboliadda, Yamuna is yet to figure out what is happening in her life. She is caught up in an adult world beyond her understanding. All she wants is to go back to school and play with her siblings at home. Her elder sister, Namitha (name changed), who got married earlier this year, is turning 15 now.

Having experienced the ordeal of a child bride, Namitha had protested against the wedding of her younger sister and had wanted to stop it. “She had come here and fought with her parents, asking them not to marry off her sister. She told them that she would do anything to stop the ceremony and protect her sister,” said a neighbour of Yamuna from Vambay Colony in Habeebnagar, adding that she must have tipped off the childline officials. Namitha is now living with her husband, who is 10 years older than her, at Amaravathi in Maharashtra. She had to drop out from Class IX days before her wedding.

Her stepmother, D. Rajeswari, second wife of her father D. Rajan Singh, wanted to marry off the girls due to what she calls “unavoidable circumstances”. “We have three more girl children at home while my husband in extremely ill. If the girls grow up, nobody will marry them without huge dowry. We do not have money to even feed ourselves. When a man among our relatives came forward to marry her without dowry, we decided to conduct the ceremony,” said Ms Rajeswari.

She added that Tuesday’s was just betrothal ceremony. “We would allow the girl to live with her husband only after she reached puberty,” she said. Yamuna’s biological mother, Shobha, who is the first wife of Mr Rajan Singh, did not have much say in her children’s weddings. “They decided and told me. I agreed because I do not have any money to marry off my kids in future,” she said. “I had seen Yamuna sobbing a few times, but I was helpless,” she added.

At the rescue home, Yamuna told the officials that she did not want to get married. “She is still in trauma. She told me that she wanted to study more and spend time with her siblings,” said an official from the rescue home. Child Welfare Committee Officials of Hyderabad are chalking out a future plan for her. The decision will most probable made on Thursday on the same, said an official from the Child Welfare Committee.

Child marriage, banned by law, still exists as a custom among a few castes of Hindus and economically backward Muslims in Telangana. Most of these families see girl children as a burden and are worried over the need to pay huge dowry if their girls are to be married off as mature, grown-up women. The family of Habeebnagar child marriage victim says what they did was as per a custom their caste followed for generations. “Our world is entirely different from yours. I got married when I was a 12-year-old and now am looking after a family,” said the step-mother of the victim, D. Rajeswari, now 33. “Earlier, in our families, we used to conduct wedding engagements of kids a few years after they were born. That does not mean we married them off when they were kids. The couple lived together only after they reached puberty,” Rajeswari said. The cost of marrying off a girl over 18 years old is something these families cannot afford. “If a girl grows up and gains weight, nobody will marry her for a small dowry. The girl will remain unmarried,” Rajeswari added.

Child protection officials say that the menace will continue till the practice of dowry persisted. “Most of these families believe that they are just passing on the burden to the groom’s family,” said V. Padmavathi, chairman of the Child Welfare Committee. In reality, it is in order to escape from the eyes of law that the parents say what they did was only a betrothal ceremony. In most cases, the victim is forced to live with her husband and is subjected to sexual abuse at a young age. Officials say that a majority of the child brides are prone to domestic violence in their husband’s home.

“When the child brides are forced to live with grown-up men, most victims tend to suffer from homesickness in the initial years. The husband and his parents would often indulge in physical assault to make the victims obey them,” said another official from Child Welfare Committee.

At least 40 children have been saved from child marriages by authorities this year in Hyderabad and Ranga Reddy district. Data of Child Welfare Committee and Childline show that few of the children were as young as 12 -13 years old. While most were rescued after receiving tip offs, there were also instances wherein the victims themselves called the Childline emergency number and sought help. Most victims were rescued before the wedding ceremony while a few were rescued a day after their marriage.

Last month, emergency services in Childline received a call from a 12-year-old girl, who said her parents had fixed her marriage. The girl, a resident of Manikeswar Nagar, got the emergency service number from her school textbook. “She told us that her parents had fixed her wedding with a man in her native village in West Godavari. We managed to rescue her soon,” said A. Ashwini, a Childline official.

In three cases in the city, the operators could not find the victims before the marriage as the families had moved the ceremony to secret locations. However, they rescued the children a day after the marriage. “In one case at Chilkalguda, the parents moved the ceremony to Mahabubnagar. But when they came back to the city, we rescued the 14-year-old child bride,” said another Childline official. Record show that in more than 20 per cent of the cases, step parents had planned the marriages. In the twin cities, the kids were rescued from Chilkalguda, Gandhinagar, Musheerabad, Ramnagar, Madannapet, and few parts of the Old City.