Kathmandu - A family in central Nepal married off their
child to save their family honour after the girl's older sister ran
away on her wedding day, media reports said Tuesday.
The groom, Ram Kumar Dahal, 19, arrived for the marriage ceremony
Monday at a temple in Banepa, about 30 kilometres east of Kathmandu,
only to find that his fiancee and girlfriend of five years, Parbati
Dulal, had run away without a word to anyone, the Annapurna Post
reported.
Her 15-year-old sister, Chandrabati, then took her place.
'We asked our younger daughter to marry the man to save our
honour,' the Post quoted the bride's father, Chakra Bahadur Dulal, as
saying.
The bride's parents said the two families had agreed to the
marriage between Parbati Dulal and Ram Kumar on the couple's
insistence and did not know why their daughter had run away.
'On Sunday, Parbati was making a traditional wedding garland,
saying her husband was really going to like it, but she ran away just
before the groom came to take her away,' Chakra Bahadur Dulal said.
The groom also found himself clueless as to why his fiancee fled
because she had agreed to the marriage after five years of dating.
Under Nepalese law, it is illegal to marry girls under 18 and the
family soon found themselves in conflict with Maoist former rebels
who arrived at the temple to stop the marriage to Chandrabati.
The teenager told the Maoist cadres it was none of their
businesses to interfere in someone else's life and they failed to
stop the ceremony, the newspaper said.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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