SC dismayed by 23mn child brides in country

LUCKNOW: Expressing dismay over an alarming figure of 23 million child brides in the country, the Supreme Court has said one out of every five marriages violated laws prohibiting child marriage. A bench of Justices M B Lokur and Deepak Gupta, which criminalised sex with a minor wife in a landmark verdict on Wednesday, referred to a study conducted on child marriages, based on 2011 census. "It was found that three per cent girls in the age group of 10 to 14 years were got married and about 20 per cent girls were married before attaining the age of 19 years,” it said. .