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Dawn. Punjab, India.
SUMERA Riaz sits gingerly on the edge of the sofa and tells her story. It is in the words of a little girl who does not understand much of anything except being torn away from her family, with not much hope of being reunited with them. But it is better this way, she knows too.
Two years ago, when she was just eight years old, Sumera was being married off to her 25-year-old cousin, but police raided the place. “I remember there was a fight, then I was taken to the police station,” she says. “Later an ‘uncle’ and ‘auntie’ came to the station and asked me if I wanted to come with them. I agreed and so they brought me here,” she says, referring to the Child Protection Bureau’s shelter.
Today Sumera studies in the bureau’s own school and rattles off things she has learnt. She is in class two, she says, and hopes to become a doctor when she grows up.
