Over 3,000 children, between four and 13 years old, were married off during the Hindu summer festival of Ramnavami at the weekend in central India with the majority not having met their partners before let alone knowing their names. According to the non-governmental organisation Forum for Fact-finding, Documentation and Advocacy, the mass weddings took place in over 1,000 tribal villages across the social and economically deprived Chattishgarh state, over 600 miles west of New Delhi.
Eyewitnesses said many of the brides and grooms, all dressed in wedding finery, were fast asleep while their marriages were solemnised around the sacred fire and their relatives celebrated with feasting and revelry.
The couples were roused only to walk around the fire seven times to complete the ritual.
Although it is illegal for girls in India to wed before the age of 18 and boys before they are 21, officials admitted that child marriages persist among tribal and desert societies in central and western India.
"This practice [of child marriage\] has been continuing for centuries among tribals and it is difficult to stop them," a senior Chattishgarh official admitted.
"The girls return to their home after the wedding and are sent to their in-laws houses only after attaining puberty," Mr Subhash Chandra Mohapatra, project executive of the NGO said. But child marriages, he declared, were playing "havoc" with women's mortality rate in this region as many succumbed to disease.