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.
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