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Friday, July 11, 2025

Man escapes child bride charge as act not yet law

by

2865 days ago
20170906

A 28-year-old Aranguez, San Juan me­chan­ic is plan­ning to sue the State af­ter he was de­tained and in­ter­ro­gat­ed by po­lice for al­most 24 hours in con­nec­tion with his mar­riage to his 17-year-old girl­friend.

Po­lice had ini­tial­ly held Mitchum De­osingh on Mon­day but were forced to re­lease him yes­ter­day af­ter­noon af­ter his at­tor­ney, Niko­las Ali, point­ed out his mar­riage to the mi­nor was le­gal as the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Mar­riage) Act is yet to be be pro­claimed.

In­ves­ti­ga­tors are al­so now seek­ing the pub­lic's as­sis­tance in lo­cat­ing his wife, who went miss­ing on Au­gust 27 af­ter the is­sue with their mar­riage was raised by po­lice and her rel­a­tives.

Checks on the Par­lia­ment's web­site yes­ter­day af­ter­noon re­vealed that Ali was cor­rect, as it stat­ed the leg­is­la­tion was still "await­ing procla­ma­tion."

The leg­is­la­tion, which raised the age of con­sent for mar­riage to 18, was passed by Par­lia­ment in June and re­ceived as­sent from Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona. How­ev­er it can on­ly take ef­fect af­ter procla­ma­tion.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view, Ali said: "We have in­ten­tions of fight­ing a case for un­law­ful ar­rest be­cause at the end of the day he did not com­mit any of­fence."

Ali al­so called on Car­mona and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi to clar­i­fy the un­cer­tain­ty over the procla­ma­tion of the leg­is­la­tion in­tro­duced to tack­le the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue of child mar­riage. He not­ed that un­til the leg­is­la­tion is pro­claimed peo­ple like his client could be legal­ly mar­ried un­der the Hin­du, Mus­lim or Or­isha mar­riage laws but al­so be in breach of of­fences against a child un­der the Chil­dren's Act.

"It is an in­ter­est­ing point be­cause it is caus­ing con­fu­sion with the po­lice and the le­gal fra­ter­ni­ty," Ali said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day to shed light on the is­sue, pro­to­col of­fi­cer for the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent Theron Bood­han ad­vised the T&T Guardian to send the query on the procla­ma­tion via email.

How­ev­er, he stat­ed: "Let me put it this way, any­thing deal­ing with procla­ma­tion that comes to the Pres­i­dent is dealt with very swift­ly. If there is some kind of de­lay, it is some­one else hold­ing it up."

No re­sponse to the email re­quest had been re­ceived up to late yes­ter­day.

In a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Al-Rawi said the procla­ma­tion would take place short­ly.

"The procla­ma­tion is just await­ing the fi­nal­i­sa­tion of the forms which Par­lia­men­tary Coun­cil and Reg­is­trar Gen­er­al has just pro­vid­ed. The is­sue will then go to Cab­i­net for its con­sid­er­a­tion," he said.

In a in­ter­view yes­ter­day, De­osingh ex­plained that he met his wife in De­cem­ber last year and they de­cid­ed to get mar­ried af­ter a sev­en-month re­la­tion­ship.

"We met in Christ­mas last year. Since then every sin­gle day we there to­geth­er, so we end up falling in love," De­osingh said.

The cou­ple al­leged­ly told his wife's rel­a­tives of their plans but they were strong­ly op­posed to it.

"They prob­a­bly want­ed a doc­tor for her but I'm just a me­chan­ic," De­osingh said, as he not­ed her fam­i­ly was not ini­tial­ly op­posed to the re­la­tion­ship de­spite their age dif­fer­ence.

On Au­gust 23 the cou­ple eloped af­ter the as­sis­tance of a pun­dit from Bam­boo Set­tle­ment and in the pres­ence of two wit­ness. De­osingh said sev­er­al days af­ter the cer­e­mo­ny he and his wife went to the Barataria Po­lice Sta­tion to seek as­sis­tance in re­triev­ing her clothes and per­son­al items from her home.

"We went to po­lice sta­tion with a let­ter from a Jus­tice of the Peace stat­ing that she left home on her own free will. We tell po­lice we legal­ly mar­ried un­der Hin­du rights and we would like for some­body to go with us to col­lect her stuff," De­osingh said.

He said of­fi­cers of the Child Pro­tec­tion Unit in­ter­vened and ques­tioned the va­lid­i­ty of their mar­riage. They lat­er re­turned his wife to her rel­a­tives, but did not ar­rest De­osingh un­til this week. De­osingh's wife went miss­ing the fol­low­ing day and is yet to be found.

"I know she would be safe, she prob­a­bly some­where just re­lax­ing or some­thing. I want her come back home be­cause I love her and that is my wife," he said.

Com­ment­ing on the mi­nor's dis­ap­pear­ance, De­osingh's at­tor­ney ques­tioned whether the is­sue with the leg­is­la­tion would cause fur­ther con­fu­sion when she is even­tu­al­ly found or re­turns home.

"She is 17, but she is legal­ly mar­ried. If she were to come in­to the sta­tion what would be the case? Is it that rel­a­tives can take her home be­cause she is not yet 18?" Ali asked.


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