Abductee Groom

Patriarchy, the social compulsion to marry and dowry have come together in a scourge called pakadua vivaah. Yogesh Pawar looks at the contours of this Western Bihar tradition...

Vinod Kumar Yadav is almost 30. This Khusrupur, rural Patna resident executive engineer with one of India's largest public sector steel units is dealing with growing pressure from his extended family to tie the knot and settle down. “It is not like I don't want to get married but the moment any prospective bride's family hears of my circumstance they get cold feet,” he says recollecting the terrible chain of events from 2017 which continue to cast a shadow on his life.

This eldest in a brood of five, remembers the biggest blow life hit him with when his father suffered a brain haemorrhage and collapsed at the beginning of October that year. “We rushed him to Patna Medical College & Hospital where he spent a long time battling for his life before succumbing,” he says with a sigh. In the wake of this tragedy unknown to him, another disaster was waiting to strike. “Even when my father was admitted to hospital one Surendra Yadav from Pandarak (nearly 55 km away in the neighbouring block of the same district) came home claiming he was a family friend of our father and was visiting on hearing of his ill-health.” 

Since his father couldn't speak in his condition and the family assumed Surendra - who visited both the hospital and home after Vinod's father breathed his last – was quite close. “He often spoke of heavy-weight contacts among politicians and the bureaucracy. I began to believe him,” remembers Vinod whom Surendra offered help in securing a huge promotion and transfer.

“Getting tempted at that prospect was my biggest undoing,” repents Vinod. “While going for a wedding on December 3rd  to Islampur, Nalanda, Surendra called saying he had fixed my promotion and transfer and that the senior politician who was helping wanted to meet me.” When he rushed to Mokama, Pandarak Surendra took him to an even more interior remote village of Gopkita where he was amazed to see the house decorated with lights and garlands. “I thought it must be a ceremony in the family or something and unsuspectingly went in to find myself kidnapped and being forced to marry Surendra's younger sister Kundan.”

When he refused and pleaded he was beaten up and even threatened at gunpoint. His phone was snatched and all contact outside was forbidden. “After they threatened me at gunpoint I went through the rituals of the wedding in tears. Even in the pictures and footage, they shot it is obvious I'm crying.”

He was then locked up in a bedroom with the bride and asked to consummate the marriage. “The girl kept telling her folks if I resisted her advances. I had to submit as they threatened to have me killed. I felt violated and dirty both through the act and later.” The next morning he somehow managed to get hold of a family help's phone and told his family what had happened. 

Khursrupur police who his family first approached asked them to go to Pandarak police since the incident happened there. “There my family and friends discovered Surendra's great rapport with the cops who told them to accept the marriage. 'What's done is done. It is not like they've killed, robbed or kidnapped him for ransom, have they?' the senior PI asked them.”

It took a whole day of calls to the Superintendent of Police and politicians to get the cops to accompany them to rescue Vinod well past midnight on December 3rd. “Traumatised and shaken I simply came back home with my parents and have never gone back. I still have recurring nightmares of what happened.”

A case filed in the local courts has not progressed since the other side doesn't show up and the police are not pursuing an investigation. “I've written to everyone from the District Magistrate, the Bihar Chief Minister, the National and State Human Rights Commission and even the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court but nothing has happened yet. I can't get married or take any other decision and feel trapped,” says Vinod who since December 3rd 2017 has not had any contact with either the girl he was unwillingly married off to or her family. 

***

Dr Vikash Kumar Soni is a doctor at the government hospital in Ramnagar in the Bihta tehsil of Bihar's Patna district. “I could've completed my postgrad in medicine and specialised by now but destiny had other plans and had her way with me,” he laughs sadly. “We're not abject poor but it wasn't even a middle-class life we led. From early on I knew to escape this life I'd have to study hard. Both my tenth board and inter percentage was quite good and I was focussing on my medical entrance.”

He had gone to the bus station in Bettiah (where they live) to drop off relatives when his friends picked him up in a vehicle and instead of dropping him home like they said, whisked him off to a secluded house on the outskirts. “Despite my protests, they forced me to marry my friend's sister (She had seen and liked me). I was scared they'd beat me and too young to even fully understand the magnitude of what's happening,” he remembered and adds hesitantly, “I was also pressurised to complete the obligation of a married man.”

This forced marriage in 2009 shook him up so badly that for two years he couldn't concentrate on studies. “From being a carefree youngster, suddenly I was responsible for another. When she came home with me, there was not only a lot of hostility between us and but also from my family,” he remembers.

Thankfully his family allowed him to make another attempt and two years later he got into medicine and after his course got a government job in a rural hospital. “I'm preparing for my master's entrance and hope to complete that soon.”

And what about his marriage? He sighs and says sage-like: “Time heals and one gets used to what life offers. What else can one do? I'm now not only reconciled with my wife but also my in-laws.” The arrival of his one-and-a-half-year-old daughter and a five-year-old son helped ease things.

***

Pushpesh Ojha (name changed on request) a Bhumihar from Chhapra says he has not gone back not only to his home town but anywhere in Bihar for over a year. “My family also doesn't want me to go back,” says this flamboyant video editor with a famous tv news channel who has a thing for gym workouts and dressing stylishly. 

A girl who saw him dance at a wedding and insisted she would only marry him. “Her family first approached my parents who perked up to idea since she is the grand niece of one of Bihar's top IPS officer who is close friends with the state's top political strong man. But I told them I'm too young and barely begun my career.”

When his parents sent word saying no, he was abducted and detained in a dilapidated old farmhouse. In an almost filmy turn of events, he found his captors lax about security after three days. One night after asking to go answer nature's call in the field behind he made good his escape. “I had cuts and bruises all over my shoulders, arms and face as the razor sharp edges of the sugarcane leaves cut into me really hard,” he says.

After hitting a road he hitched a ride and went to the Dighwara station where he caught a train and found his way to Delhi. “My parents came visiting me once to the house I'd moved into. But we're so paranoid I changed houses again. I've told them also to move away with me to Bangalore but they find it hard to give up their roots.”                    

***

Vinod, Vikash and Pushpesh are not isolated, rare instances but just three among thousands from Western Bihar and bordering UP abducted for jabariya/pakadua vivaah (enforced marriage). Bihar police statistics show 3,681 youth were kidnapped and married off forcefully in 2018; 3,400 in 2017; 3,070 in 2016; 3,000 in 2015 and 2,526 in 2014. In fact, though not even half of 2019 is over the there are already 1,612 cases. 

Retired DGP P K Thakur says this problem is more social than legal. “Even if two consensual adults elope angry parents often claim kidnapping. Even if a pakadua vivaah is established, months of investigation and hard work go down the drain when other facts emerge or the couple/families lose interest in pursuing the case.”

Now a debutante director Prashant Singh is making a mainstream commercial Hindi film Jabariya Jodi. “My film is a romantic comedy film starring Sidharth Malhotra and Parineeti Chopra. While it is based on groom kidnapping in Bihar it is essentially a love story contexted in the region and this issue.”

Singh who has family roots in Bihar points out how the 2009 national awardee Antardwand had first dealt with this subject in a dark and real manner. “But it was a niche film and largely stuck to the festival circuit. I want the psychosocial implications of this issue which has seeds in patriarchy to be taken to masses in a way they will relate to,” he says of the film which began as a germ of an idea based on the story by Sanjeev Jha.

Sanjeev says he grew up in Motihari where he saw such kidnappings happen all the time. While researching the film both he and Prashant travelled through the region meeting families directly affected. “While authorities tried to downplay the figures saying that the numbers had gone down from the 80s and 90s my RTI threw up the fact that since 2000 there have been 17,000 plus such cases!” He also pointed out how the figures for ransom kidnapping (once famously called Bihar's 'most lucrative cottage industry' by an SC judge)  had comparatively fallen. 

Our search for why this happens led us to a young man currently in the thick of managing the campaign of a political heavyweight contesting Lok Sabha elections from the riverine belt of Koshi. On condition of anonymity, he admits running a groom abduction gang whose “guaranteed” services has many takers. According to him abducting grooms is the Bihari poor's answer to the scourge of dowry.

“When I abducted people for ransom I was feared but reviled. Now people treat me with great respect and love,” he says proudly and explains, “An engineer in a well-paying government job can even demand in the excess of a crore in dowry. When the girl's parents come to us they're able to get the same guy at 1/5th the cost. Of this even if we spend 50% on paying off police and others and costs of transport, arms, etc, it is a clean killing of Rs 10-12 lakhs per abduction. And people treat what I do like social work.”

Doesn't it ever get messy? He says largely people get tired of fighting and accept the marriage. “It is a good thing everyone here believes they have to get married sooner or later. In the end, it becomes easy to use that and convince them.”  But he remembers one such instance where the boy abandoned the girl in Begusarai he was forcefully married to. “The girl wouldn't let go. She filed a case in the fast track court looking into domestic abuse and kept going to the CM's Janta durbar to follow-up. Finally, the boy and his family gave in. She now lives with him in Delhi and is expecting their first child.”

All's well that ends well... Till the well water turns out murky...