One official estimates that up to 8,000 Kyrgyz girls are kidnapped and forced into marriage annually. Few statistics on bride kidnapping are available, but one study last year found that 45 percent of women married in the eastern town of Karakol in 2010 and 2011 had been non-consensually kidnapped.

Like many kidnapped brides, Totugul - who hails from a small village outside of Karakol in eastern Kyrgyzstan and asked her last name not be printed - had a religious ceremony, or nikaah, to sanction the union. But her marriage was never registered with the state. That left her in a position that many other Central Asian women face; she had limited legal options to seek child support after her husband left her. "My marriage was not registered and no one will help me. Our [village] women's committee has talked to many government officials but, because our marriages are unregistered, we [bride kidnapping victims] don't have rights," she said.

Few bride kidnappings are reported to authorities, says Kamil Ruziev, a human rights lawyer with the Karakol-based NGO Vantus. "Friends of the brides come to our office. The brides can't come themselves because they are locked up in a house. The friends or family try to call the police, but the police can't get involved unless the bride asks for help, which she won't be able to do," Ruziev told EurasiaNet.org.

In addition to the legal limitations, Ruziev attributes the underreporting of kidnapping cases to government officials' implicit approval of the practice.

"The police are loyal to the practice of bride kidnapping. I have asked government authorities for help and, when I protested against the continuation of this practice, they laughed at me and said that bride kidnapping is tradition," he explained. "No one follows the law, not even the local authorities."

A human rights advocate working with a women's shelter in Talas says a lack of professionalism on the part local officials and police is a big part of the problem. "We have trained the police on how to fill out their own internal forms when women want to file complaints. They do not know the laws and they are corrupt. They are not only proponents of bride kidnapping, but they sometimes initiate it," said the advocate, who asked to remain anonymous because the shelter works directly with the police.

Talas, an isolated region in northwestern Kyrgyzstan, is believed to have one of the highest bride kidnapping rates in the country. One of the few studies that exist found that, in Karakol, 45 percent of women married in 2010 and 2011 had been non-consensually kidnapped.

As a result of the pressure from the female relatives of the kidnapper, and often pressure from her own family to accept the proposal for the sake of the family's reputation, most women who are abducted eventually consent to marriage. After the woman agrees, it is unlikely that she will report the kidnapping, as that would require her to press charges against her husband and in-laws, with whom she often, by this point, lives.