6 persons booked for 'remarrying' in govt's mass wedding event

GREATER NOIDA: While it has come to fore that at least 10 couples re-married for the sake of money and gifts worth Rs 35,000 in the mass wedding held by the district administration under the 'Mukhyamantri Samoohik Vivaah Yojana', the administration has lodged complaint against only six people in the matter.
On Tuesday, three of the six accused were arrested on the complaint of the district social development officer Anand Kumar Singh by Dankaur police.

These include the village pradhan’s husband Dharmendra Bhati and two cousins from Nangla village who re-married their wives -Ravindra and Vineet for the sake of money and gifts.

The FIR also names the village pradhan Babita, Sobindra of Cheeti village who remarried his wife during the mass wedding on February 24 and Vineet’s wife Nishu. These three are absconding.

However, villagers allege that the FIRs have been lodged only against those who have kids (Ravindra, Vineet and Nishu) while the other Sobindra's wife confessed the truth by admitting that she re-married despite being married in September 2017 (Sobindra).

However, none of the other couples have been booked so far even as the photographs of first marriage of one of the couples have come to fore.

One of the ten couples Mohit and Pinky got married in November 2017 but their family completely denied the same during the visit of the Chief Development Officer (CDO) Anil Kumar Singh on Monday.

The photographs in possession with TOI mention the names of the couple too in the background.

In a statement to the CDO, Mohit’s mother Indravati said that the couple got married for the first time during the mass wedding only.

Narendra Singh, a villager told TOI that like this Girish and Saroj, Bunty and Sonia and Ranjit and Soni who are from the village got married previously.

“Their kin had refuted the claims but we informed the CDO that these too had re-married. Our version was not taken into account,” he said.

Kin of the ones who have been booked, complained there has been no action against those who have lied while the ones who admitted the truth are being targeted.

Sobindra’s sister Geeta told TOI that her brother has been booked because his wife said the truth. “He is paying a price of speaking truth. We don’t know why this is happening,” she said.

DM BN Singh told TOI that prima facie, four of the 10 couples were found to be married previously. When asked about the other couples and the one whose photographs are out, he said that these are being “verified”.

The DM added that he has sent a report to the state government about the involvement of two officials from the administration in the mass wedding but refused to share their names.

“It will not be correct to name them as of now,” he said. He did not confirm if the officials are from the office of the social development or the chief development officer.

Two couples from Cheeti village Hariom and Poonam and Pavan and Foola remained untraced by the CDO's team.

While the administration arranged the wedding of 66 couples who are said to have an annual income of less than Rs 48000, TOI had reported on Tuesday that many of these couples have double-storied homes in the Cheeti-Nangla villages with at least three of them having kids.