Child marriage alert in India

BBC News:

Indian authorities have stepped up efforts to prevent child marriages on an auspicious Hindu day on Wednesday.

Officials in western Rajasthan state said that local authorities were trying their best to stop such marriages.

But there have been reports of child marriages taking place in the state before the auspicious day of Akha Teej.

Though the practice was outlawed in 1929, boys and girls are still married off forcibly in some parts of India.

Marriages of girls under the age of 18 and boys under 21 are illegal in India.

The authorities claim that they are vigilant this time.

"We have directed district collectors and superintendents of police in all the 32 districts in the state to leave no stone unturned in their effort to prevent child marriages", Rajasthan's women's commission chairperson Pawan Surana told The Times Of India newspaper.

She said the commission was able to prevent some 500 cases of such forced marriages in the state last year.

"Efforts have also been made to generate public awareness against child marriages through street plays and corner meetings," Ms Surana said.

She said that the parents of the children, the owner of the building where the marriage takes place and the priest conducting the ceremony could be arrested if a case was detected.

But a local activist Rakesh Singh told the newspaper that villagers had organised marriages before Akha Teej to escape the law.

Officials intervened to stop a wedding of a 12-year-old boy to a 14-year-old girl in Bassi area on Tuesday, the newspaper reported.

Elsewhere, in Madhya Pradesh state, there were unconfirmed reports of an attack on a social worker who tried to stop such illegal weddings.

News and Blogosphere:

Woman's hands chopped off

Woman official loses hands for stopping child marriage

Social worker's hands chopped off in Bhopal

It's child marriage day in Rajasthan

Marriage, a child's play in Jaipur

Man loses cool, woman loses arm

Gaur prepared to go soft on child marriage