It’s a SHOT

Antardwand | 2010 | Director Sushil Rajpal’s film, based on the harrowing experience of a friend, sank at the box-office but won a national award for best film on social issues

Dulha Babu | 2006 | Director Virendra Rathore’s Bhojpuri film starring Rakesh Pandey, was about a kidnapped groom

Niyati | Pravesh Bhardwaj’s film on the subject, starring Swara Bhaskar, remains in the cans

It’s an unusual wedding video. The groom is crying, the bedecked bride sits quietly. “We are not hanging you,” says someone in an annoyed tone. The groom’s uncontrollable bawling brings an elderly woman into the frame who wipes his tears. “Whatever had to happen has happened,” she consoles him. Turns out the groom was Vinod Kumar, a 29-year-old junior manager in Bokaro Steel Plant, who had been kidnapped, roughed up and forced to marry a girl at gunpoint on the outskirts of Patna. “They threatened to kill me otherwise,” he said later.The two-minute video, widely circulated on social media and shown on national television, has brought the spotlight back on ‘pakadua biyaah’, where eligible grooms like Vinod are kidnapped and married off in parts of Bihar The phenomenon first grabbed attention in the early 1980s in Begusarai, Samastipur, Patna and Lakhisarai districts. Over the years, groom kidnappings became a cottage industry and the subject of countless stories, documentaries and feature films, both in Hindi and Bhojpuri. A senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, says shotgun weddings had almost vanished post-2000. But Vinod’s kidnapping last month shows that this bizarre crime continues.Shotgun weddings primarily happen among upper-caste Bhumihars and OBC Yadavs. Vinod is an OBC. Patna-based social scientist Shaibal Gupta points out that such kidnappings display an awareness of caste and class. “You will not find inter-caste shotgun weddings. There is also a degree of class compatibility. An upper middle-class guy can be married off to a lower middle-class girl. But forced marriages are not carried out between a prince and a pauper,” says Gupta of Asian Development Research Institute.Soaring dowry demands and contempt for the law are two prime reasons for such acts of felony. Paying off the kidnappers works out cheaper for the girl’s family, the police officer says. “In many cases, the groom is forced to consummate the wedding. The kidnappers and the bride’s family want her to get pregnant to put moral and psychological pressure on the groom. In many cases, the groom ends up accepting the union,” says Amitabh Verma, who wrote the screenplay of Antardwand, a film inspired by a real-life shotgun wedding.Bihar police does not maintain separate data for groom-kidnap weddings. As per state crime statistics, 1,702 incidents of kidnapping for marriage were reported in 2010. The number climbed to 3,070 in 2016 and 3,110 till October 2017. However, these figures reveal little about the frequency of shotgun weddings because cases of elopement are included in this category.Cases of men being kidnapped for marriage have been reported from time to time. In March 2016, a 15-year-old boy was kidnapped in Patna and taken to Khusrupur where he was forced to marry a 12-year-old girl. The boy’s father owned 26 bighas of land, while the girl’s father was an autorickshaw driver. Last May, Abhinay Kumar, 22, was abducted and married off in Muzaffarpur district.Often, in such cases, the victim is lured by an acquaintance or a friend, and made to accompany him before being abducted. Vinod was befriended by the girl’s brother when his father was ill. “My father was in a coma for almost four months at a private hospital when the girl’s brother Surendra met me and claimed that he was our father’s friend,” he says. Surendra did not answer TOI’s calls on his cellphone. The girl’s brother-in-law Madan Kumar refused to comment on the incident though he was present at the wedding.Interviews with kidnappers, grooms as well as brides are available on YouTube . Those interviewed, however, don’t reveal the year when the events occurred. In one such video, a group of armed marriage mercenaries admits to kidnapping potential grooms from their homes or from markets. In another, a groom recounts, much in the manner of Vinod, how he was waylaid, beaten up and made to marry at gunpoint. In one video, a bride reveals how she had to face ill-treatment from her in-laws. “After the marriage, it was like everyone was in mourning at my new home. But I was determined to make my marriage work. It took me four years to be accepted,” she said.Vinod, however, has filed a petition before a court against the girl’s family members and also against the police personnel who initially refused to lodge an FIR. “Instead they told my brother, ‘Kahin to shaadi kijiyega. Manage kar lijiye (You have to get him married somewhere. Just manage)’,” Vinod says. Following the orders of zonal I-G Patna Nayyar Hasnain Khan, an FIR was filed on January 13, nearly six weeks after the incident. One thing is clear: weddings at gunpoint are hardly a thing of the past.