THE GREAT LIBERATOR
KRITI BHARTI 31 SOCIAL ACTIVIST, JODHPUR
It was while studying for a graduate degree in psychology in Jodhpur and comforting a rape victim that Kriti realised the power of counselling and how much she could have benefitted had it been available to her. For her doctor father had abandoned her mother before she was born. Relatives wanted her mother to abort the baby but she was born in the seventh month in Gujarat and raised in Bhilwara where her mother worked as a government employee. Her mother’s family never accepted her and she suspected she was given slow poison because her body became paralysed when she was 10. More than any treatment, she believes her guru Brahmanand cured her through Reiki. She had quit studies in Class IV but returned to give her Class 10 exams at the age of 14. “Clearing Class 10 was a more significant achievement for me than the doctorate I got later,’’ she says.
While researching for a doctorate in psychology, Kriti came across several cases of young girls trapped in child marriages. When she went through the law, she was surprised to find that it provided for annulment of such a marriage, irrespective of gender, religion and caste. NGOs and governments, on the other hand, were confining themselves only to prevention of child marriages.
She got the first ever annulment of a child marriage at the family court in Jodhpur in 2012. The case of Laxmi Sargara, 18, features in the record books and the CBSE syllabus.
She now runs Saarthi Trust which is dedicated to the welfare of women and children. She has also set up a child helpline called ‘Aapno Saathi’, runs a creche in the slums and a selfemployment training centre for women in Jodhpur. Kriti has till date got 38 child marriages annulled, prevented 1,200 from taking place and helped protect and rehabilitate 6,000 children and 5,000 women. She fights the child marriage cases herself even though she doesn’t have a degree in law. “UNICEF has trained me in certain aspects of the law which helps me,” she says.
It hasn’t been easy, though. Rajasthani society doesn’t approve of opposition to its social norms, and she has received many death threats. But it doesn’t bother her.
“She has done well to take up a littleknown provision of the child marriage annulment which applies to everyone irrespective of gender, religion and caste” Ajay Jain, Lawyer