Says such a marriage is not a “valid marriage”; but it is “not invalid”   Marriage of a person with a girl whose age is below 18 is voidable. It will subsist until it is annulled by a court under the Prohibition of Child marriage Act, the Madras High Court has ruled. Such a marriage is not a “valid marriage” in the strict sense; but it is “not invalid”, it said. In a...

-The Times of India   This is going to be a tough code of conduct. You can be imprisoned for impregnating your own wife. Worst, you could be branded as a `legally disqualified person'. This will be a reality if the Kerala Women's Code Bill 2011, submitted to the chief minister by a 12-member committee with Justice V R Krishna Iyer in the chair, is implemented in its letter and spirit. In a bid...

Stories abound in Bhopal of the life and death of Shehla Masood. But among those who knew her, there appears agreement on one point: something was so uncharacteristically passive, so un-Shehla-like, they say, about the dead body slumped in the driving seat of the silver-grey Santro on the morning of August 16, with no evident signs of struggle and a bullet hole in the neck. Some crude clues to the extraordinary...

Maharashtra Minister launches “Save the Girl Child” campaign to curb sex-selective abortions In a packed cultural hall in Chandrapur, poor acoustics did not take away from a serious play on female foeticide. The voices of the actors went high and low as mikes were pushed hastily towards them. At the end of the play, there was a poignant appeal from an unborn girl who asked for a chance to live. On Sunday...

With skewed sex ratios it is difficult to find a local mate Decades of unchecked sex-selective abortions have made the once fertile States of Punjab and Haryana suffer a drought of brides, making human-trafficking a lucrative and expanding trade. Often projected as a voluntary marriage, every year, thousands of young women and girls are lured into the idea of a happy married life with a rich man in Punjab or Haryana....