NI Bureau
A Bihar teacher, Gautam Kumar, who recently passed the Bihar Public Service Commission exam to become a teacher, was abducted and compelled to marry at gunpoint. Three to four individuals forcibly took him from his school within 24 hours of the incident, making him marry the daughter of one of the kidnappers against his will. This incident adds to Bihar’s history of ‘Pakadwa Vivah’ or groom kidnapping, where unmarried men are coerced into marriage with a gun pointed at them.
The kidnapping occurred in Bihar’s Vaishali district, where Mr. Kumar had just been appointed as a teacher at Utkramit Madhya Vidyalaya in Patepur’s Repura. Following the incident, Mr. Kumar’s family protested by blocking a road, prompting the police to initiate a search operation to locate the missing teacher.
Blaming a man named Rajesh Rai, Mr. Kumar’s family accused Rai’s family of forcibly taking him and marrying him to Rai’s daughter, Chandni. Despite Mr. Kumar’s refusal to accept the marriage proposal, he faced physical violence. Mr. Kumar highlighted a recent Patna High Court judgment that annulled a ten-year-old forced marriage, emphasizing his resistance.
The police have registered an FIR in connection with the case and launched an investigation to take further action against the kidnappers. ‘Pakadwa Vivah’ is not uncommon in Bihar, with previous incidents involving a veterinarian in Begusarai and an engineer named Vinod Kumar in Patna, making national headlines.
