Runaway brides exit from observation home
Rachna Khaira
Tribune News Service
Jalandhar, May 21
Seventeen years old Surabhi (name changed), a runaway bride from Hoshairpur was staying at the state protective home at the Gandhi Vanita Ashram for the last one and a half year. She was tired of making repeated requests to the home authorities to send her back to her in-laws but to no avail. During her stay at the state protective home, she even gave birth to a son and since then was apprehensive about his future to be known as the one born in ‘jail’
However, the recent landmark judgment of the Punjab and Haryana high Court directing the state government not to keep the runaway brides against their will at the state protective homes has infused new life into Surabhi and many more like her.
While 36 girls out of the 65 have already gone back to their in-laws house willfully from the state observation home at the Gandhi Vanita Ashram, 29 girls were released from the state protective home in the city.
According to Rana Kanwardeep kaur, Civil Judge (senior division) cum Secretary of the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) who is felicitating the move said that majority of the girls had shown willingness to go back to their in laws house.
“Out of the 36 girls released from Gandhi Vanita Ashram, 29 so far have opted to unite with their in-laws family after claiming life threat from their parents. We have handed over them to their in-laws only after proper verification and would also keep a vigil on them for some time,” said Rana Kanwardeep kaur.
This freedom hasn’t come easily as the girls made repeated attempts to commit suicide or run away. Girls had even threatened the DLSA authorities during their visit that they would burn themselves alive inside the ashram for the illegal confinement by the state government against their wishes for the past one year.
DLSA blew the whistle on their plight on April 24 last year. During a raid, Rana Kanwardeep and her team found CCTV cameras installed inside the inmates’ rooms in the ashram in violation of their privacy. In a report sent to the Punjab and Haryana High Court, she stated that the orphan girls as young as four years and runaway brides were lodged in a single room. This would affect the junior girls’ impressionable minds, she mentioned in her report.
Following this, the court while passing the landmark judgment, directed the state government to set the girls free who had performed marriage without parental consent and were confined in Jalandhar-based Gandhi Vanita Ashram. The order comes after Justice Mahesh Grover found that the girls’ individual liberties were being abused and curtailed. He asserted that most of the girls were minor and confining them to protection homes against their wishes would imply curtailment of their liberties as enshrined in Article 19 of the Constitution.
