This is Unna (name changed), she was born in 1995, before yesterday we came to know from some children that she was getting married. We called the father, or better say we brought the father to our school, he was insisting that she is 16 or 17 years old, and that the future husband is also same age. We told him that from our record it show that she is only 12 or 13 at the most, (as you can see from the picture). We told him that we will report to the police and he and the husband will be arrested.
The father was begging that he has already arranged everything and the married was due to take place today, 21st Nov. He has 7 daughters, the youngest one is not even one year old!
After heaving him out threatening to call the police we told him that Unna's sponsor has already donated 5 dollars per month for her welfare and she has 50 dollars in her account, if he let her finish her study or until she is 18 she will have more than 20,000 rs or 500 dollars. That money will be given to her when she leave the school.
Faced from one side by jail term as now in India child marriage is a hot issue and police has to take action when reported to them, and on the other hand the prospect of having the money needed to marry the daughter when she is of age, he agreed to stop the marriage and let her come back to school, by the way she is in 4th grade at Sandipani Muni Primary School, and four of her sister are also in Sandipani Muni School.
After he went back home, he was harassed quite a lot from the husband party as they have paid for the arrangement and maybe even given him some money in order to marry Unna, we also found out that the husband is not 16 but 28 years old or more.
No doubt the rascal has tried to sell off his child daughter, sure lured by money and the overwhelming fact that he has another six daughter to have to marry.
Poor Unna was crying when we brought her to school, she thought that we have broken her marriage and that now her life is lost. These girls are so badly brain washed by the family that even at 12 or 13 they are made to believe that getting married with an older man its a blessing to them and they will enjoy married life, not knowing that they are traded off just like animals, with no feeling at all.
Today we were fortunate to have a lady from Switzerland who is a professional midwife, she gave class to our older girls about the enormous danger of pregnancy while still very young.
As you may have read in our E-news we have one girl of 14th which is 6 month pregnant and one of 16th also 6 month pregnant.
In the photo below you can see Unna (last on the right with brown sweater). We wanted her to understand that getting married at 12 is not such a good thing to do.
India has enormous problems with population, but nothing is done to prevent child marriage, if the Government could tackle just that they could immediately reduce the population growth by at least 50%, and also reduce the infant mortality rate that is superior to Sub-Saharan regions of Africa.
