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.
Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang. The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil. Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture. In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
RSS