The hands of a woman campaigning against child marriage were chopped off by a youth in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh, it was reported yesterday.
The incident took place in the Madhya Pradesh town of Dhar Tuesday, an auspicious day in the Hindu calendar for solemnizing marriages, the Telegraph newspaper reported.
The youth knocked on the door of Shakuntala Verma, a supervisor in the state child and welfare department, saying he wanted directions to a house. When Verma stepped out, he chopped her hands off.
Her relatives rushed her to hospital in the nearby town of Indore where the doctors said she was out of danger after undergoing a nine-hour surgery.
The police said Verma was attacked because she had been touring nearby villages discouraging people from marrying under-age children.
Her brother Sushil said she had received threats from some villagers.
Verma had warned villagers that she would scrutinize birth certificates of all new grooms and brides.
Hours after the macabre attack, 50,000 marriages were solemnized in Madhya Pradesh in auspicious hours that come once a year. Weddings can be solemnized during these hours without a priest oveeing the wedding. The state authorities could not say how many of these were child marriages.
The marriage of boys under 21 and girls under 18 is illegal under Indian laws. But the practice of child marriage is still widely prevalent in remote and backward rural areas of the country, especially in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.
Madhya Pradesh chief minister Babulal Gaur had created a flutter when he ruled out "serious action" against offenders in child marriage cases last week. "Social customs are stronger than laws," he had said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing