These local village level self-proclaimed legal authorities strongly believe that the cell phones are responsible for girls running away with their lovers and also for girls marrying out of their castes. In this region it is not the family alone, whose sanction a girl needs to get married, the whole community has to approve it.
It is ironic... These rural courts stay quiet, if a boy from a community rapes a girl from the other community. In one of the rape cases, recently, even a proper Indian court pronounced only six months imprisonment to the accused, whereas even the Indian Penal Code has fixed seven year term for a rape accused.
It's a male world !!!
Atrocities on girls are going on for past many years in this area of the nation. What is surprising, is that everyone (including the government, the judiciary and the police) is aware of these obsolete and fossilised practices, which are rampant even in the 21st century but no one dares speak against the same.
If the girls have to live their lives as per the whims and fancies of their families and respective communities, why treat them like humans? Treat them like material possessions - lock them in cupboards and give the keys to the communities. Take them out only when the men need them for either their work or for their entertainment. Ask them to perform either in the kitchens or fields or in beds and again lock them back.
Start treating the girls like objects and they will forget to live like humans. Their brains will not think and their hearts will not wish, they will have no dreams and no aspirations. The men can use them and abuse them in whatever way they fancy.
Even the government, which does not intervene in such barbaric diktats, should close down all girls schools and should stop talking about women empowerment.
I wonder what stops the government from taking an action against such inhuman and uncivilised rural courts which always come up with weirdest of verdicts - mostly against women!!!
Where are we going and where will it lead us? I think people who do not think on the lines of these rural courts, need to ponder over the matter and try evolving a solution to stop such a barbaric system, where girls are neither considered humans nor treated humanely.
