The police in Nedunkandam in Kerala’s Idukki district on Saturday registered a case over a complaint that a 15-year-old Tamil girl was married off to a 36-year-old loan shark, also a Tamil Nadu native, by her parents as they were unable to repay the Rs2-lakh loan they had taken from him.
As per the complaint lodged with the police by the paternal uncle of the girl, a Class 9 student, and some local people, the marriage had taken place at the loan shark’s home at Veerapandi in Tamil Nadu last Tuesday, reports said. The girl’s family, hailing from Tamil Nadu’s Theni district, had settled in Mavadi, a village near Nedunkandam, sometime back.
The complainants said that the parents were forced to marry the girl off to the loan shark after his threats became unbearable. Reports quoted them as saying that the loan shark himself had asked the parents to let him marry the girl if they could not repay the debt. The parents of the girl are plantation workers.
The girl’s paternal uncle told the media that the marriage had taken place when the family went back to Theni for the Easter vacation. The Nedunkandam police had initially refused to register a case on the basis of the complaint, saying the incident had taken place in Tamil Nadu and it was up to the police there to act on it, reports said.