Oriya brides of Bundelkhand begin their fight against exploitation

Munni heads the Oriya Women Exploitation Committee which she formed recently after she and her 14-year-old sister were raped by eight persons. While Munni managed to escape, her sister Arti was held captive for six days and raped repeatedly. Munni and her husband Ghanshyam Das Kumar, however, put up a fight and got six of the eight rapists arrested after lodging an FIR in the local police station.

Forming a committee for the welfare of women from Orissa is a small but significant step in countering a social trend which started over a decade ago in the region. During this period, nearly 6,000 women from Orissa have been brought as brides to hundreds of villages spread in the two states of the region.

A number of these girls are graduates and post-graduates but are married to illiterate villagers because of poverty in their state. The “marriage of convenience” suited both the families because “suitable boys” here generally not get “wives” as they are too poor.

Then come the match-makers, some of whom have now assumed the role of pimps who sell girls to hotels or brothels. The match-makers are mostly truckers who carry goods to Orissa and comeback with girls and their parents with a promise to marry them to “suitable boys.” The marriage is solemnised and the match-maker gets money from parents of both.

“This trend has continued for the last one decade and there had been no major complaints of sexual harassment as the girls live happily with their husbands. But of late, some of these match-makers have become pimps and there has been reports of these girls being sold out of Bundelkhand,” said Daya Ram Kushwaha, former municipal corporation chairman of Barua Sagar.

The newly formed committee for welfare of the women is also getting panic messages from helpless parents in Orissa. Deo Bhandu of Chandrashekharpur village in Navgarh, Orissa, wrote to Munni on July 24 requesting her to inquire about his daughter who was taken to Bundelkhand for marriage. There was no trace of her.

“The girl has been sold to a hotel in Paharganj. A resident of Orai district had promised to marry her and sold her to the hotel after raping her for several days,” says Munni’s husband Ghanshyam Das.

“We will carry on with our fight and contact a large number of women from Orissa. We want complete honour for these woman because they are treated like animals,” he added. Police have refused to act on this information but the committee has decided to rescue the girl from the New Delhi hotel.

Cases of rape and illegal confinement have risen in several police stations in both the states which means that the trend of marrying Orissa girls to UP and MP boys has acquired a sinister dimension. “The cases have risen considerably which means there is something fishy,” says Nirmal Tigga, SDM, Niwadi. Recent reports from Kendrapara in Orissa had brought to light several cases of harassment of Orissa girls in UP.

Three persons were arrested by the Jhansi police last year for bringing four girls from Orissa. No case, however, was registered and they were released. “The police act on complaints. If neither the parents of the girls nor those of the boys contact police, what can we do? There is no clear-cut instruction from the government to check the marriage of Orissa girls,” says P R Thakur, sub divisional officer (police) in Madhya Pradesh.