A British Columbia decide has annulled the wedding of a lady to a fellow member of an India-based “cult group,” saying she didn’t “actually consent” to the 2023 wedding ceremony.
The B.C. Supreme Court docket ruling issued this week says the girl claimed she was manipulated and overwhelmed by a “barrage” of overtures from the person and his household that started in October 2022.
The ruling by Justice Ian Caldwell says the girl was an 18-year-old everlasting resident in Canada when she was first contacted by the person, who lived in New Zealand and was round 32.
The ruling says she didn’t want to marry however the man and his household “continued,” bringing a “sacred meals reward” to her office and claiming the union was “blessed” by a priest of the Dera Sacha Sauda non secular group.
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The person’s sister warned that refusing the wedding would invite “the wrath” of the non secular neighborhood.
Caldwell’s ruling discovered the wedding “voidable,” saying the person “pursued, harassed, and even perhaps stalked” {the teenager} who was beneath duress when the marriage occurred in Abbotsford, B.C.
The ruling says the girl had lastly agreed to marry on April 25, 2023, and was picked up from work the following day by the person’s relative.
She was pushed to a house the place a Punjabi wedding ceremony go well with was ready for her, and the ceremony occurred that day with out her household current.
The girl, the decide discovered, “had clearly instructed the respondent that she didn’t want to get married, and definitely to not him.
“She expressed this on a number of events. He refused to just accept ‘no’ for a solution.”
The girl returned the marriage ring quickly after the ceremony, the wedding was by no means consummated and she or he didn’t go to New Zealand to stay with the person, who left Canada the following month.
The decide famous that the girl claimed she was “overwhelmed, in a state of shock, and unable to totally comprehend what was occurring” when the whirlwind wedding ceremony occurred.
“One doesn’t must look far to be confronted with the realities of different younger individuals, additionally of their teenagers, who’ve taken drastic actions, together with suicide, within the face of such challenges and threats to social standing and status,” Decide Caldwell dominated.
The Dera Sacha Sauda group is led by a guru who calls himself Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh Ji Insaan, who has been convicted of raping two followers and murdering a journalist.
He’s serving a life sentence in India.
— With information from The Related Press
© 2025 The Canadian Press
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