Hyderabad: Spike in child marriages due to pandemic crisis

Hyderabad: Prompted by uncertainty during lockdown several parents married off their minors, but the situation is now brought under control. Thanks to the SHE Teams and the voluntary groups which jumped to stop the trend by the end of the 2020, following reports that scores of girls were being married off.

According to SHE Teams, the situation is closely being monitored and the police stopped two child marriages under the Cyberabad limits last month. The victims in recent cases were 16 and 15 years old and after verifying, the officials took the matter and stopped it. ''Between (2016-2019), the city officially recorded no such cases. However, the rate of child marriages during pandemic (2020) enormously increased due to financial crisis in few communities. Now the situation is under control,'' said Police official of SHE Teams.

Child rights activists in the city have also raised concerns over huge number of cases of child marriages during the pandemic, which were said to be over 200 during the year. There could be more such cases which went unreported.

''In one of the recent cases, the volunteers of NGOs Balala Hakkula Sangham and Aman Vedika rushed to the location along with SHE Teams and police to stop the marriage of 16-year-old girl who was about to be married off to a man who was 8 years older to her. After witnessing and conversing with the victims of child marriages act, the activist from Aman Vedika, Shobha Naik, who focuses on women and children safety, said ''one of the victims was forced to marry early as her parents weren't alive and had become a burden to her relatives.''

In another case, Anitha (name changed), 15, the victim from Hyderabad, said, ''I wanted to fulfil my dreams and keep studying and achieve good grades in my school. But unfortunately, I was told to marry a man who hasn't even seen me or known me before. All I knew that he was 37-year-old and I realised all my dreams were being shattered''.

NGOs reported that the marriages took place in districts Hyderabad, Nalgonda, Vikarabad, Mahabubnagar, Ranga Reddy, Wanaparthy and other places, where the minors were being offered in marriage, as they felt they were burden.

Even the Global Girlhood Report (2020), warned of 2020 being a year of "irreversible setbacks and lost progress" for girls, predicting that 5 lakh more girls were at risk of being forced into child marriage this year alone and 1 million more expected to become pregnant.