Delhi teen rescued a month after being sold for Rs 15-20k, forced to marry 40-yr-old in UP

A teen girl from Bharat Nagar of Delhi was rescued almost a month later after being trafficked and forcibly married off in Uttar Pradesh. She was trafficked after leaving home following a dispute with her father, who later boarded a train that escorted her to Meerut. After the girl reached the station, two men lured her with false promises and took her to Shamli, where she was illegally married to a 40-year-old man, with creating fake Aadhaar card showing her age as 19 years.

According to a report by TOI, the 13-year-old girl was rescued after she managed to give a missed call to her grandmother, resulting arrest of three men in connection with the case. In response to the act, police filed a case under Section 137 (kidnapping) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

Police sources indicated that they received a complaint about a missing girl on July 22. But even after continuous effort by the family and the police, she was untraceable at first. "While we were searching for the girl, her family informed us that they had received a missed call from an unknown number. When they called back, a woman answered and said her daughter-in-law might have made the call, then abruptly disconnected it. The number provided by the family had one incorrect digit, and when a police team followed that lead to Mathura, it turned out to be false," a police source said.

After procuring the correct phone number, the team of police traced the location to Shamli and rescued the girl from a home. Surprisingly, from the investigation, police later discovered that the teen girl had left her home and boarded a bus to a railway station and then randomly taken a train that led her to Meerut.

Girl married in exchange for Rs 15,000-20,000

After reaching the station, she began wandering in the station where she encountered a 20-year-old man, who promised her to settle down, but it turned out to be a trap for the girl. Later, the man from Hapur and a 55-year-old associate from Meerut carried the girl to Shamli, where they forcefully married the girl to a 40-year-old man in exchange for Rs 15,000-20,000 on July 24 after making a fake Aadhaar card to show her age as 19 years. Four days after the forced marriage, the teen was reportedly sexually assaulted at the residence of the man with whom she was forcefully married.

In response to it, the Bharat Nagar police booked the duo along with the man who married the girl under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), including charges of human trafficking, forgery of official documents, and exploitation of a trafficked person.

In addition, all three were also charged under Sections 6 and 21 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act as well as Sections 9 and 10 of the Prohibition of Child Marriage Act, 2006. And a further probe into the incident is underway.