Elopements most prosecuted under child marriage law: Study
- Partners for Law in Development (PLD), a Delhi-based legal resource group, has released a report titled “Child Marriage Prosecutions in India”.
- The group has analysed 83 high court and district court verdicts in cases relating to child marriage from 2008 and 2017.
- Child marriage in India continues to thrive by and large in the rural areas more than elsewhere in the country.
Key findings:
- legal prosecution of child marriages was twice as much against elopement or self-arranged marriages by girls with such cases accounting for 65% of the total cases studied.
- Only 30% of the cases were those of arranged child marriages, and a mere 5% were forced child marriages which involves kidnapping, enticement or forcible marriage by parents.
- Generally, the parents of girls approach the legal system with a complaint.
- Only 7% of the cases were initiated by a child marriage prohibition officer.
- the punishment for elopement could be imprisonment of 10 years to life imprisonment if convicted for rape under the IPC or jail of 20 years to a maximum punishment of death under the POCSO Act.
- In case of forced and arranged child marriages under the PCMA comes with no minimum sentence and a maximum sentence of imprisonment for two years and/or a fine.
- These laws are sometimes used as weapons to settle family dishonor.
Child marriage:
- Child marriage is the marriage of a person aged before majority i.e younger than 18 years old.
Prohibition of Child Marriages Act, 2006:
- It was passed in 2006 to provide an adequate solution to this social menace.
- This Act replaced the Child Marriage Restraint Act, 1929 which was enacted during the British era.
Key provisions of the Act:
- The legal age for marriage in India is eighteen for girls and twenty-one for boys.
- Child marriages are not considered illegal but merely voidable.
- The only exception where a child marriage can be declared as void even before the child reaches the age of 18, is when the child has been abducted, kidnapped, trafficked or been compelled to marry under force, deceit, coercion, or misrepresentation.
- Any man who is aged above eighteen who contracts for child marriage is punishable by imprisonment of up to two years or maybe charged with a fine of up to one lakh rupees or both.
- There is also a provision for maintenance of girl child. Husband is liable to pay maintenance in case he is a major. In case, the husband is also a minor, his parents would be liable to pay maintenance.