A 16-year-old girl who was being forced into marriage was rescued by police moments before the rituals were to begin in North 24-Parganas’ Taki on Friday.
The girl had cleared her Madhyamik exam this year and her parents had organised the wedding at her aunt’s home, a kilometre away from her house in Taki, on the bank of Ichamati river in the Basirhat sub-division.
“We had received a tip-off from a local NGO working to prevent child marriage that a schoolgirl was being married off. We started a search for a ceremony and found the venue,” said an officer of the local Hasnabad police station, about 65km from the heart of Calcutta. “The girl’s father has given us in writing that he will not get her married off till she completes her education.”
According to the state commission for protection of child rights (SCPCR), North and South 24-Parganas have recorded the maximum number of complaints of child marriage since the first phase of the pandemic and the subsequent lockdowns. Officials of the SCPCR said in most cases, either the parents wanted to get their teenage daughters married off to relieve themselves of the responsibility or the girls would run away on their own in search of a bright future.
On Friday night, the girl’s father told the police that he was not financially equipped to pay for his daughter’s higher education.
The father, a van-rickshaw puller, had readily agreed when a match came for his daughter. The groom, Babusona Mondal, 24, works as a labourer in a nearby brickfield.
“When the police team reached, the groom had arrived and some of the invitees had also started having their dinner. The priest was about to start the sindur-dan ritual,” said Kuddus Gazi, a member of an NGO Keya, which works to prevent child marriages in parts of Hasnabad and Hingalganj. “We have been able to prevent close to 100 such marriages in the past two years.”
The police team took the groom, his father and the girl’s father to the police station.
“Some residents of the area have said they will pitch in if it was for the girl’s education,” the police officer said.
