Bhagalpur: Residents of a village in Bhagalpur district stopped the marriage between two Class VII students on Monday and told the boy and girl to concentrate on studies instead, in what seemed proof that chief minister Nitish Kumar's anti-dowry and anti-child marriage call is resonating among the people of the state.

The boy and girl, both from Munger, had fallen in love while attending coaching classes in neighbouring Bhagalpur's Sultanganj block, around 190km east of Patna, and their families decided to get them married. The girl has a relative in Karhariya panchyat under Bath police station in Sultanganj block, some 29km west of the Bhagalpur district headquarters.

When the families reached the temple, the local priest refused to solemnise the marriage. The family members managed to get another priest from outside.

Soon, villagers assembled and threatened to call the cops. "The family members and the priest got scared and fled but they left the boy and the girl behind," said a local resident.

Another resident said: "The boy and girl were pleading not to hand them over to police and claimed their family members had forcefully brought them to the temple. When the cops did not came after hours, we allowed the boy and the girl to leave and told them to focus on their studies rather than marriage at such an age."