Teen forced to marry moneylender in Bdesh

DHAKA (AFP) - Police in Bangladesh are investigating after a 13-year-old girl was married off to a 75-year-old moneylender, older than her grandfather, as a way of paying off her fathers debt, a police chief said Sunday.
The chief of police for the Muladi sub-district in southern Bangladesh said the girl had been forced to marry the moneylender to clear her fathers debts, although the details of the financial transaction had still to emerge.
Our officers went to the village but did not find (moneylender) Lokman Shikdar and his teenage wife, Akhinur. We did find out that the father of the bride had some sort of financial transaction with the moneylender, police chief Amir-uz-Zaman told AFP.
He added that the moneylender, who already has 11 children by a first wife, had recently lent a cow to the brides father.
The English-language newspaper The Daily Star reported that the girl was forced into marriage due to her father owing the moneylender just 4,000 taka ($57). He borrowed the money for rebuilding work after his village was hit by devastating Cyclone Aila in May this year, the paper said.
Although marriage of girls aged below 18 is a punishable offence in Bangladesh, it is widely practiced in the Muslim majority nation as very often families alter the age of their daughters on official documents.