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NEW DELHI – The call came in on August 18 at 1.45pm, just before Narayana Sukla was about to settle for lunch.
He heard a girl sob on the line. “Please rescue me immediately or they will kill me,” the 12-year-old told him.
“My mother has forced me to get married, but I want to study,” she pleaded, using her 19-year-old husband’s phone secretly.
As the coordinator of the Childline India Foundation, which runs a national helpline for children in distress with government support, Sukla knew he had no time to waste.
He called concerned government officials and quickly left his office in Cuttack, Odisha state.
Born to poor and illiterate parents, the girl had married on August 12 and had even been sexually assaulted by her husband.
Mr. Sukla arrived at the home of the girl’s in-laws in Dandapadi, a remote village in the district, after traveling for almost five hours.
She was rescued that night – the family showed no resistance as Mr. Sukla was accompanied by local police – and was subsequently placed in a government-supported shelter.
It was one of 13 child marriage cases that Sukla has had to intervene in since March 20 of this year.
“We are receiving more cases of child marriage since the closure,” he told The Straits Times.
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to an increase in child marriages across India, as struggling families – many left without work and pushed into poverty – turn to marrying off their daughters to reduce their financial burden.
Several districts have reported an increase in child marriage attempts, and many other cases are suspected to have gone unreported.
Dr. S. Diwakar, the child protection officer for the Mysuru district in Karnataka, said his district reported 123 such cases between mid-March and July, compared to around 75 for the same period last year. .
Of the recent cases, 110 were detained by the authorities. India entered a national lockdown on March 25, with a gradual relaxation of measures since early June.
“During the confinement, many families tried to marry off their daughters, thinking that government offices would be closed with only the emergency services in operation,” he said.
“And now, families are celebrating marriages very early in the morning or at midnight in the temples, hoping they don’t get caught,” added Dr. Diwakar.
Some families have also taken advantage of the economic downturn to host low-cost weddings.
The Tiruvannamalai district of Tamil Nadu also saw an increase in child marriage attempts. In June, the district reported 35 such cases, a new monthly peak since January 2017.
Between April and July this year, Tiruvannamalai recorded 83 cases of child marriage, compared to 67 in the same period last year.
Dr. Christina T. Dorthy, the district’s welfare officer, told ST that authorities stopped the 83 cases. “Covid has provided a haven to mask these marriages.
“It’s something under the blanket,” he said, adding that authorities intervened in some cases to find weddings about to take place without arrangements like pandals (a cloth shelter) or even the presence of guests.
Data from the Childline India Foundation indicate that their representatives had to intervene in 14,775 cases of child marriage prevention between January and July of this year.
While interventions in the same period last year were higher at 17,181, child marriage prevention cases in the months without lockdown this year increased by 17% to 21% compared to last year. This includes the months of June and July, in which the blockade was progressively relaxed.
This upward trend in child marriages has been exacerbated by schools that have been closed since March. Many poor families depended on public schools to keep their children busy and fed during the midday meals served there.
Without this source of livelihood, families are now forced to send their sons to work and marry off their daughters.
“Any girl who does not attend school is a potential girlfriend,” said Ms Ananya Chakraborti, chair of the West Bengal Commission for the Protection of Children’s Rights (WBCPCR), adding that the increase in poverty and unemployment has made them more vulnerable.
“It’s kind of a less mouthful to feed,” he added.
The WBCPCR launched a dedicated child marriage hotline in June as concerns for girls trapped in their homes increased amid the pandemic and especially after Cyclone Amphan, which caused widespread damage and deaths in the region after touching land on May 20.
The helpline had received reports of 41 child marriages as of August 19, of which almost 90 percent were detained by authorities.
Despite considerable progress, child marriage remains endemic in India, a country that accounts for one in three married girls in the world. According to 2019 data from Unicef, 102 of the 223 million girl brides in India were married before their 15th birthday.
The most recent government data from 2015-16 indicates that 27 percent of Indian women were married before the legal age of 18, while 20 percent of men were married before the legal age of 21.
In Maharashtra, child marriages have been driven by demand for labor amid a bumper sugarcane harvest.
“Many contractors are offering better rates for a couple of workers,” said Santosh Shinde, a child rights activist and former member of the Maharashtra State Commission for the Protection of Children’s Rights.
Fees can range from Rs 150,000 to Rs 300,000 (S $ 2,785 to S $ 5,570) for an eight-month period of work in the field.
Many poor families are taking this opportunity to send their daughters along with children from other families during this extended period to work after marriage.
He added that more than 200 cases of attempted child marriage between March and June were reported in the state.
However, nearly 95 percent of these unions were bypassed with the help of the authorities.
The government is considering raising the minimum age for women to legally marry and bringing it to that of men, which is 21.
While welcoming this as a measure that will bring gender parity, Dr. Kriti Bharti, the trustee for the Saarthi Trust, which works to prevent and annul child marriages, said it will not reduce child marriage cases.
“People can’t wait until their daughters are 18 to get married. Why would they wait until they were 21?” she said.
Activists say reducing child marriages requires stronger law enforcement and greater awareness, including about the harm it causes to children.
Child marriages are known to lead to domestic violence and even human trafficking, as well as to malnourished mothers and children.
“If there is a growing teenage girl sitting at home in the rural and semi-urban belt of India, people still consider her a time bomb,” said Ms Sudeshna Roy, special consultant for WBCPCR.
“People are scared, people just want to get rid of it one way or another,” he said, adding that this attitude is gradually changing with heightened awareness that has led to an increase in reports of child marriages.
In addition to the children involved in these marriages, such as the girl mentioned at the beginning of this story, information about these marriages is often leaked to the authorities and activists by other children, as well as the inhabitants of the area.
The Child Marriage Prohibition Act prescribes penalties for “solemnizing” and “promoting or allowing the solemnization of child marriages”, but the number of cases filed and the conviction rates remain low.
Based on the latest crime data available nationwide from 2018, the police recorded only 501 incidents under this law that year.
Of these, 368 cases were sent to trial and only two cases resulted in convictions.
The authorities also take a lenient approach in cases where they intervene before a marriage is solemnized.
On such occasions, families are left with a written commitment stating that they will not attempt child marriage again. Follow-up care is carried out to ensure that the children do not marry later, but activists say some weddings are still held in greater secrecy despite this monitoring.
Families must be prosecuted even for attempted child marriage to establish a deterrent, according to Dr. Bharti.
“Child marriage is aborted just because social activists or alert authorities show up. When people are searched for attempted murder or rape, why not book for attempted child marriage?” she said.
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