Indian girls 'sold as brides for as little as £15'

Indian girls 'sold as brides for as little as £15' According to a survey by one of India's leading women's rights groups, one 15-year-old girl was sold to a family in Haryana for around £15. The group, Drishti Stree Adhyayan Prabodhan Kendra, surveyed 10,000 families in Haryana – believed to be one of India's worst affected by female infanticide – and found 318 cases of women who had been sold by their families as brides. Many of the women were from Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, three of India's poorest states. According to the Times of India, most of the women had been sold to grooms from the Jat tribe which traditionally demands dowry payments from brides' families. Many of the marriages had been arranged by commercial agents. Payments ranged from £15 to more than £2,000. The payments were made to the girls' families and only seven said they had received a share of the money. Haryana state has seen a sharp decline in the number of girls per thousand boys in the last year. The demand for sons has led to the growth of illegal sex determination tests and abortions where the results indicate a girl – considered a burden in a society where dowries and wedding ceremony costs have risen sharply. In Faridabad, a satellite town of the capital New Delhi, the number of girls born per thousand boys has fallen from 903 in 2009 to 877 this year.