Maharashtra youths start WhatsApp campaign to end virginity test of brides

A group of youngsters belonging to Kanjarbhat community in Pune, Maharashtra has started a campaign to end the malpractice of determination of virginity of brides on their wedding nights.

Mumbai, Jan 16: There has always been a lot of fuss about the virginity of unmarried women in India. We have often heard prospective grooms stating that they would only marry a virgin woman.

However, nobody questions whether a man is a virgin or not. Such hypocrisy is not new in India. Often, the virginity of a woman is seen as a symbol of her piousness, which is nothing but ridiculous and used as a tool to dominate the female population of the country further.

What is more outrageous is that there are some silly ways to determine the virginity of women, which often are unscientific.

In fact, a group of youngsters belonging to Kanjarbhat community in Pune, Maharashtra has started a campaign to end the malpractice determination of virginity of brides on their wedding nights.

Their campaign is propelled by WhatsApp through which they are spreading the message against the physical and emotional torture meted to brides through the virginity test.

The campaign has been titled as #StopTheVRitual. The youths have also filed a police complaint against the practice recently.

"A group of youngsters from Kanjarbhat community in #Pune have formed a WhatsApp group to spread awareness against practice of determining the virginity of a bride on the wedding night; have also filed a police complaint against the practice," tweeted ANI.

Talking about how the campaign kick-started, Vivek Tamaichekar, founder of the WhatsApp group, told ANI that while sharing some material on triple talaq and right to privacy on Facebook, the community members decided to start the protest movement against the atrocity.

"We had shared some material on triple talaq and right to privacy on Facebook. Like-minded people from our community (Kanjarbhat) gave a positive response. So we came together to protest against this atrocity," Tamaichekar told ANI.

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