A Class XI student, a mere 16-year-old, was about to be married off at a village in Basavakalyan taluk.
But soon, she remembered a day at her school when a member of the Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, Shashidhar Kosambe, had visited.
Kosambe advised the students to call the child rights protection if they are ever forced to get married. And she did just that on September 21.
On September 22, Shashidhar Kosambe along with several district officials, rushed to the village and met the family. The family was counselled and an undertaking was signed by the mother, which stated that she will not marry off the girl till she becomes an adult. The district child protection was asked to give the teenager Rs 4,000 every month, stated a report by The New Indian Express.
The girl said, “I want to become a police officer to help our village.”
And this is how the young student saved herself from child marriage.
It was poverty that had compelled the student's mother to fix her marriage with a 25-year-old maternal uncle. Though the student opposed this, it seemed like it was in vain. Her father had died and the mother, a farm labourer, was the sole breadwinner. The family had four girls and a boy. He three elder sisters were already married off, stated a The New Indian Express report.
