Janakpurdham, March 3
Child marriage still remains a problem in the Dhanusha district of Madhesh in spite of the laws banning marriage before 20 years of age.
As per the legal provision, any wedlock before this age is considered illegal; it automatically becomes invalid and is also a punishable offence. However, many people in the district are found to be ignorant of this legal provision and hence there is an increasing trend of child marriage.
In view of the growing tendency of underage marriage in the district, the police in Dhanusha have initiated a special campaign to prevent and control the practice of child marriage. The police prevented nine instances of child marriage in the last one and half months under this campaign, DSP Jeetendra Kumar Basnet of the District Police Office says.
Basnet adds the campaign has been run to stop underage marriage by spreading public awareness that child marriage is a punishable crime. DSP Basnet says, “We have been launching interaction in villages under the Community-Police Partnership Programme on the harmful social practice and have immediately stopped it if we get information about it.”
He further says the police believe the problem would decline this time as compared to the previous years due to this.
