Patna: A 29-year-old junior engineer at Bokaro Steel Plant was reportedly abducted and forced to marry a woman at gunpoint in Bihar.
According to a video from the wedding, Vinod Kumar can be seen crying while he dressed-up as a groom and being beaten up in Patna’s Pandarak area.
The local media reported, Vinod was kidnapped during a friend’s wedding in December, where relatives of the girl had met him.
As Vinod did not reach home, his brother Sanjay Kumar contacted the police informing them about an unknown phone call that intimated him about his brother’s ‘pakadwa vivah’.
“My brother boarded Hatia-Patna express from Bokaro as he had to attend a wedding function near Patna on December 3. Surendra Yadav, the woman’s brother, persuaded him to come to Mokama. He was abducted there and taken to Pandarak where my brother was forced to marry the woman,” Sanjay said, according to media reports.
Prabhakar Vishwakarma, the Pandarak police station in charge denied the allegations and said, “We asked the boy’s family to lodge an abduction case at Mokama because the alleged abduction took place there,” local media reported.
The police had reportedly received around 3,000 complaints of groom kidnapping in 2016, and there were no actions taken.
Groom kidnapping or Pakadwa Shaadi is prevalent in the western parts of Bihar, and eastern Uttar Pradesh in a bid to avoid heavy dowry expenses. The eligible bachelors are kidnapped by the bride’s family and forced to get married.