BENGALURU: A 16-year-old HIV-positive married girl from north Karnataka was rescued in Bengaluru in January this year by the police and produced before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) after she lodged a complaint against her husband over domestic violence.
“The minor, when produced before the CWC, narrated to us that she got married when she was 14 to a 22-year-old man in Bengaluru. Her first born died after five months. She had conceived again, but suffered a miscarriage five months into her pregnancy,” said Chairperson, CWC (for girls aged between six and 18 years), Bengaluru Urban jurisdiction, Anjali Ramanna.
Subsequent to his arrest under the Prohibition of Child Marriage (Karnataka Amendment) Act, 2016, the minor’s husband was found to be HIV-positive. “The girl, when sent for medical examination, was also found to be HIV-positive. We tried to track her family in North Karnataka and found her mother, who worked as house help in the neighbouring state.
She refused to come to Bengaluru to meet her daughter. We also found out that the girl was HIV-positive at birth and has been on antiretroviral therapy (ART) drugs for a long time,” said the Child Welfare Committee chairperson. The minor has been sent to an institution for HIV-positive children for care and support under the CWC supervision.
Bengaluru, the IT City, has a dark underbelly marred with crimes against children. Child marriage is one of them. “The CWC Bengaluru Urban jurisdiction has received 40 cases of child marriage between January 2020 and May 1 this year,” the CWC chairperson added.
Educated folks too getting minors married: CWC
The CWC chairperson said that while a majority of child marriages turn out to be of minor girls eloping with their boyfriends and getting married to them fearing parental and family opposition, there are cases where educated and well-to-do families have got their minor daughters married. “A student of Class 10 in an international school in the City was married to her mother’s relative.
The parents were arrested,” she said. In yet another bizarre incident, the mother of a 15-andhalf- year-old girl along with the mother of an adult man, who is working in Dubai, got the minor ‘married’ virtually! “The girl’s mother tied the thali to her daughter, while the boy’s mother made a video call to her son and announced their marriage,” she said.
Ramanna said that very often, parents from socially and economically weaker sections are unaware of the law and get their daughters, who are a few months short of turning 18, married. “We have also received some cases in which the minor girls called 1098 – the child helpline – to register complaints against their parents, who were forcing them to marry,” she added.