Teen walks into police station, gets her marriage stopped

A 15-year-old girl’s grit and defiance saved her from being trapped in amarriage that she did not want.

On Thursday, Lakshmi walked up to a special sub inspector at Vepanapalli checkpost near her village and told her about the impending marriage and that she was underage.

The girl was escorted to the police station and was assured of timely intervention and sent home. The Vepanapalli police visited the girl’s family and took a written commitment that they would not marry her off.

The wedding that was slated to take place in the small hours of Friday was eventually stopped.

Mehndi

Late Friday evening, with elbow-length mehndi as the only marker of a wedding that was to have taken place, Lakshmi along with her 40 year-old-mother, was at the office of theChairperson of the Child Welfare Committee here.

For Uma, Lakshmi's mother, marrying off her daughter was a way to reduce the number ofstomachs to be fed.

“I have to eke out a living out of daily wages of Rs.150. Also, I thought she was 18 years old,” says Uma, whose husband, a drunkard barely visits his family.

“My father had not come home for over a fortnight,” says Lakshmi, who is the second born among four siblings. She dropped out of school after Class 6, and went to work in a mill in Coimbatore under the Sumangali Scheme for four years, and returned home only 6 months ago.

It seems that Lakshmi’s defiance was born of her dislike for the 25- year-old groom.

“Perhaps she would have gotten married if she had liked him,” says Vincent Sunderaraj, Chiarperson, CWC, as Lakshmi sheepishly grinned. When asked how she decided to go to the police, she says, “My friends told me that it was illegal to get married before 18 years.”

Continuing menace

Despite the wry humour, this incident has flagged the continuing menace of child marriages in this region. If there had been no timely intervention, this marriage would have led to sexual assault and accompanying violence against this girl, says Mr.Vincent Sunderaraj.

The incident also brought to fore a lack of coordination between the various agencies that are required to step up in cases such as these. The police made efforts to contact the District Social Welfare Office, but it remained unreachable.

It was The Hindu which alerted the CWC, which has now proposed to place the girl in a home and put her back in school.

Child Welfare Committee in Dharmapuri proposes to

put her back in school