Nilphamari Correspondent
A marriage register in Nilphamari was arrested and sentenced to one-month imprisonment by a mobile court at 4.00-p.m on Tuesday on the charge of registering child marriage.
The convict marriage register is identified as Kazi Md Mohsin (45) son of Kazi Ehsanul Huq of Fultala village of sador upazila. He is working as marriage register in Kundopukur union of the upazila.
The prosecution in a brief is that the accused marriage register illegally registered marriage of teenaged bride and bridegroom.
According to the academic registration certificate of the bride Sumi Begum (15) it is learnt that she is a student of class eight in Natun Bazar high school in local municipality. Her date of birth is 15 April 1998. She is the daughter of Mozibar Rahman of Purbo Kukha para village in the municipality.
The bride groom Abdullah-Al -Mahmud (17) is a first year student of local Moshiur Rahman degree college and his date of birth is 8 September, 1996, as revealed in his academic registration certificate.
He is the son of Abdul Mozid also hailing also from Purbo Kukhapara village.
It was also learnt that the marriage register performed the illegal marriage on 16 November 2013 without the knowledge of the bridegroom’s parents by making false birth certificates of the bride and the bridegroom from local municipality showing them adult.
Later he performed an affidavit of the marriage showing false birth certificates.
Abdul Mozid, the father of the bride Abdullah lodged a written complain to the upazila nirbahi officer (UNO) of sador last month regarding the illegal marriage seeking justice.
Accordingly, the UNO accepted the complain and empowered the manager of local Ansar-VDP Bank, Mozahedul Islam Zahid to investigate into the matter..
The investigation officer found the allegation to be true and submitted the report on 12 February 2014.
Barisal Correspondent adds: A team led by Advocate Salma Ali, Executive Director, Bangladeh Women Lawyers Association, on Tuesday morning rescued a 10-year old girl
from marriage with a 44-year old man at Rasulpur area under ward-9 of Barisal City Corporation.
Masuk Kamal, Area Coordinator BNWLA Barisal Unit, said Lina Begum, a volunteer of the information center at the ward, informed that she collected Sonia Akhtar Rimi, 10, after guardians of the girls arranged her marriage forcibly.
Sonia was daughter of Sobhan Payada, a day labour and Baby Begum, a domestic worker and a student of class 1V at local primary school.
The girl was registered (ID No. 5114) with Rural Urban Child Migration Project (RUCMP) under BNWLA with technical and financial assistance of European Union and Save the Children International.
Hearing this information the BNWLA team on the way to Tungibaria for a field trip of the project, changing their direction rapidly reached at the spot.
Then BNWLA informing local police station and talking with the guardians of the girl took her under BNWLA jurisdiction.
Sobhan Peyada, father of 1 girl and 1 son, acknowledged the facts ofarranging marriage of the girl with one Jamal Mia, 44, working as a causal worker at postmortem section of Barisal Sher E Bangla MedicalCollege Hospital.
Due financial crisis to maintain a four-member family, we became bound to arrange marriage of Sonia considering her bright future and social safety, the poor father acknowledged. The resued victim Sonia told she did not want to marry now and continuing hher education and wants to be a teacher.
Jamal Mia, the bridegroom, said that his wife died few days ago and to take care of his minor son; he decided to perform second marriage and socially arranged that without considering age of the bride.
Salma Ali, BNWLA Executive Director said, socio-economical conditions including poverty of the family, lack of awareness of the family and society about the severe negative affects of child marriage, domestic violence, negligence of raring girl-child by the parents usually causes child marriage and all of us should voluntarily combat against that for betterment of the nation.
The girl became traumatized and so would be sheltered at BNWLA safe home in Dhaka for counseling completing legal procedure and consents of the parents as return her to family has strong possibilities of rearranging marriage of the child, Salma Ali told.
