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http://www.bbc.com/news/stories-43262319
A routine abduction - of a 13-year-old girl
- 4 March 2018
On the morning that I met Ram Bharan, a brick maker in a remote village in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, his family was in the midst of wedding preparations.
The bride was Bharan's 15-year-old daughter. The sweet-faced teenager was seated on the floor of their m&d hut, slathered with turmeric, in a pre-wedding ritual meant to purify the skin. But unlike any wedding ceremony I'd been to, this one was devoid of music, dance, even joy. The atmosphere was laden with sadness.
Ram Bharan hadn't planned to marry his daughter off so young. He was an illiterate, daily wage labourer, and like any father he wanted the best for his children. The legal minimum age to marry in India is 18 for girls, and Ram Bharan would have liked his daughter to finish her education.
But in April last year, his youngest child was abducted. She was, he told me, 13 years, nine months, and three days old.
Every morning Savitri accompanied her mother to the brick kiln, with a flask of tea for her father. The kiln was 20 minutes down a quiet m&d road. But that morning, some men pulled her into a moving jeep. Her horrified mother could only scream as they drove off in a cloud of dust. The teenager is still missing, and she is just one among very many.
Activists say that as many as 500,000 children go missing in India every year.
