Activists and officials in Andhra stop mass marriage where the oldest bride was 8-yr-old
Roli Srivastava
Hyderabad: Social activists and government officials last week intervened and stopped a mass marriage of children aged between 6 and 14 years being held in Kagazmaddur village, barely 50 kilometres from Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh. Last Thursday, on the occasion of ‘ Ambaiyya Jatara ’ , considered auspicious for weddings, over a hundred members of the Gangiredulla community gathered in Kagazmaddur village for the mass marriage when a community member tipped off some social activists who in turn alerted government officials and the police. “ We faced a lot of resistance as the villagers were concerned about the money already spent on organising the event, ” said M Subhash Chandra of Centre for Action Research and People ’ s Development (CARPED), a social organisation that has been working among members of the same community in another village, Kowdipally, to put an end to child marriages. The money villagers spent on the annual ritual is close to between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000, a princely sum for the Gangireddulas, a notified nomadic tribe of beggars. However, the police, activists of CARPED and another NGO – ROAD, managed to convince them from going ahead with the weddings. The presence of the police too helped. Another concern of the community was that if their daughters got married at a later age, they would have to shell out dowry, which they could avoid by marrying them young. Chandra said that the brides at the mass marriage were as young six years old and the oldest bride was eight. The boys were aged between 12 and 14 years. Source : Mumbai Mirror,
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
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