Bride’s family kidnaps engineer, performs wedding at gunpoint in Bihar
A 29-year-old junior engineer at Bokaro Steel Plant was reportedly abducted and forced to marry a woman at gunpoint in Bihar.
Video clips from the wedding show Vinod Kumar, the forced groom, being beaten up and compelled to perform wedding rituals in Patna’s Pandarak area.
The local media reported, Vinod was kidnapped during a friend’s wedding in December, where relatives of the girl had met him.
As Vinod did not reach home, his brother Sanjay Kumar contacted the police informing them about an unknown phone call that intimated him about his brother’s ‘pakadwa vivah’ ( forced marriage)
Ever since the incident, Vinod’s family has been receiving threat calls to not seek police help and accept the marriage.
“My brother boarded Hatia-Patna express from Bokaro as he had to attend a wedding function near Patna on December 3. Surendra Yadav, the woman’s brother, persuaded him to come to Mokama. He was abducted there and taken to Pandarak where my brother was forced to marry the woman,” Sanjay said, according to media reports.
The allegations are now being investigated by the police, though Sanjay alleged they had refused to help earlier.
Pandarak police station in charge Prabhakar Vishwakarma, however, denied the allegations.
“We asked the boy’s family to lodge an abduction case at Mokama because the alleged abduction took place there,” he was quoted as saying by the media.
Sanjay then approached Patna Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj on whose directions Pandarak police freed Vinod from the village where he was kept after the forced marriage.
“We are looking into it and will take action against the culprits. We are also probing the role of the local police,” Patna city SP Amarkesh said.
Reports show that the police received nearly 3,000 complaints of groom kidnapping in 2016, none of the which were annulled.
Groom kidnapping or Pakadwa Shaadi is prevalent in the western parts of Bihar, and eastern Uttar Pradesh in a bid to avoid heavy dowry expenses. The eligible bachelors are kidnapped by the bride’s family and forced to get married.
