A girl’s defiance of caste panchayat is proving costly to her family. The brave girl who refused to recognise her childhood marriage has sought the district collector’s help as the caste panchayat has issued a diktat that either she go to her in-laws’ place else her family must pay Rs 9 lakh as penalty.
The girl, who is still a minor, was married off at the age of eight. However, in her letter to the district collector of Jodhpur, she has said that she was a kid at the time of marriage, unaware of what it really meant. “I cried a lot, but my parents convinced me that they were not sending me. About two years back, my in-laws started building pressure on my parents to send me with them, but the matter lingered on,” she said while refusing to accept the marriage. “I didn’t even know at that time what marriage meant,” she said. She was married to Madhuram of Kheda Salvan Kalan in 2007 during “mausar (death custom)” of her aunt. Last month, about 50 elderly people of the caste came to her house and told her father that either he send the girl to her in-laws or pay the penalty of Rs 9 lakh, failure to which the family would be ostracised.
