MIRPURKHAS: Mirpurkhas police saved five underage girls from being married off by their parents in a Digri taluka village on Saturday.

The girls, one of them nine years of age, belonged to the Kohli minority community, whose members claimed ignorance of the relevant law.

Sources told Dawn that Noor Ahmed Narejo, an activist of the Sindh Rural Partners Organisation, a non-governmental organisation, had informed Mirpurkhas DIG Javed Alam Odho and SSP Muhammad Usman Ghani that the marriages of five underage girls were to be held on Feb 20 and 21 in Abdul Shakoor village, Puban union council.

Heavy contingents of the Digri police station raided the village, took pictures of the girls and stopped the marriage.

The police took some relatives of the girls, including Dewan and Somji, fathers of two of them, to the police station.

When questioned, they reportedly said they knew nothing about the Sindh Child Restraint Act, 2013. They told the police that underage marriages were common in scheduled caste communities such as Bheels and Kohlis. The girls’ elders were allowed to go home when they gave an undertaking to the police that they would not marry their girls until they reached 18 years of age.

Published in Dawn, February 21st, 2016