Single women have been banned from using mobile phones in an Indian village - to stop them arranging forbidden marriages that are often punishable by death.
Lank village council, in northern India, decided that unmarried men can use mobile phones, but only under parental supervision, while women were forbidden outright.
Local women’s rights group criticized the measure as backward and unfair.
Married women can use mobiles - but not singles in Lank (not shown in picture)
Marriages between members of the same clan are forbidden under Hindu custom in some parts of north India, where unions are traditionally arranged by families.
In conservative rural areas, families sometimes mete out extreme punishments, including so-called honour killings, for those who violate marriage taboos.
In some cases, village councils themselves have ordered the punishments, though police often intervene to stop them.
The Lank village council feared young men and women were secretly calling one another to arrange forbidden elopements.
Last month, 34 couples eloped in Muzaffarnagar district, where Lank is located in the state of Uttar Pradesh, police said.
Among the couples who eloped, eight honour killings have been reported in the last month, police said.
‘Three girls were beheaded by the male members of their family after they eloped’ with boys from their same clan, said police assistant director general Brij Lal in the state capital of Lucknow.
Rulings by village councils - called panchayats and comprised of village elders selected by the community - are not legally binding in India, but are seen as the will of the local community, and those who flout them risk being ostracized.
In Uttar Pradesh, panchayats are particularly powerful and have declared that boys and girls of the same clan are essentially siblings.
The mobile phone ban for unmarried women is part of a wider, regional effort to curb intraclan marriage among the 3million population of western Uttar Pradesh.
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