Hyderabad: Fourteen-year old Shalini (name chan-ged), a high school student from Kavvaguda, Shamshabad, is the daughter of local politician and belongs to a well-to-do family. Despite her being a minor, her parents arranged a marriage with a 26-year-old trader from Mahbubnagar district. Hours before the wedding ceremony, a team of unwelcome guests — local police officials and child rights activists — gatecrashed the function and rescued the girl.
While most child marriages take place among poor families in Telangana state to get their daughters out of poverty, Shalini’s parents had a completely different reason to get her married at a young age. “We were worried that when she grows up she might fall in love with someone and would bring a bad name to our family. In order to avoid any stigma in the future, we decided to marry her off when a good match came along,” her father said.
After Shalini reached puberty, her parents were waiting for the marriage season to start so that the ceremony could be organised. The politician added that he was not aware that the wedding would be stopped by cops. It’s not just him. Records show that the number of child marriages has spiked in the summer holiday season in the city and suburbs as parents are trying to get their daughters married soon after they complete their class 10 education.
Officials from the women and child welfare department and Childline say that they have been getting increasing numbers of alerts this month. Officials take the help of priests, decorators and even girls’ classmates to get information on these secret marriages. Apart from the excuse of economic considerations, there are other pretexts that lead parents to consider marriage for their teenage girls.
When child rights activists rescued a 13-year-old girl, who was being married to a 15-year-old boy, the son of a temple priest, in Banjara Hills, they were stunned to find out that the family wanted the marriage because of their tradition. “They told us that as per astrologers, the time has arrived for the boy and girl to get married. They believed this marriage would bring more prosperity to their lives,” an activist said.
At other times, parents are compelled to marry off their teenage daughter. “In one case in Hayathnagar, the girl’s father owed a few lakhs to a 35-year-old financier. As he could not pay back the money, the financier demanded that he give him his 14-year-old daughter instead,” said Mr Achyuth Rao, child rights activist.
The law is tough, but no one has been jailed:
Police can book the parents who push their minor children into marriage under Section 10 of the Prohibition of the Child Marriage Act, 2006. The Act imposes '1 lakh fine and two years in prison. The police has also warned priests that they will be booked under the same sections if they perform the marriage of minors. A senior police official said that a case can only be booked if the marriage has been solmenised.
“In most cases, we rescue the girls before the wedding. We do not book cases, we counsel them. So, there are few cases booked in the city,” said a senior police official from Hyderabad. In the first week of February, the Hayath-nagar police had booked a case against S. Anjaneya Sharma, a priest at the Lord Ganesh temple in Banjara Hills, who got his 15-year-old son married to the 13-year-old daughter of Pantangi Ramesh Kumar Sharma, a priest at the Vemulawada temple in Sircilla district.
When police visited the spot, the wedding had taken place. The conviction rate in this Act is zero in the last three years; all cases are pending in the city courts.
