chennai a report analysing the trend of selfarranged marriages among adolescents following a study of 15 girls aged between 15 and 20 years from delhi mumbai and jaipur was released by partners for law in development pld in the city on fridaytitled why girls run away to marry adolescent realities and sociolegal responses in india the study explains how economic marginalisation and lack of opportunities along with stigmatisation of adolescent sexuality have resulted in the trend of selfarranged early marriages it details factors such as lack of rapport with parents fear of censure and punishment and strict rules against pursuit of interests as some of the contributorsdrawing distinction between forced arranged and choice marriages it looks at how policy responses and use of laws such as prohibition of child marriage act pcma and protection of children from sexual offences pocso act often unjustly persecute older adolescentsthe study points out that after the legal age of sexual consent was increased from 16 to 18 years in 2012 consensual relations between adolescents including noncoercive relationships between peers have been viewed as sexual abuse when we looked at trial court records we found that in nearly 70 of the cases pcma was used by parents against daughters who had eloped many times with pocso said madhu mehra executive director at pld and one of the authorsthis not only leads to young couples facing parental backlash but brand boyfriends and young husbands as sex offenders this is particularly crucial following the recent amendments to pocso act that awards stringent punishment including a minimum term of ten years for aggravated penetrative sexual assault on a person under 18 years of agethere are separate statistics for cases of child marriages and pocso they cannot be viewed under one lens while the marriage of under18 girls is illegal the 2016 national family and health survey nfhs4 revealed that 27 of girls married before they turned 18 and 31 of married indian women gave birth by the age of 18 years said vidya reddy founder of tulir we have been looking at this issue only in terms of child marriage now its time to look at the nuances she added