Usmail Meher, 16	Hakima, 40
Usmail was made to marry Hakima when just 10. Seven months later, Hakima gave birth to a girl. Usmail killed the girl because "it was not my child". He was arrested but acquitted.

Through most of the day, Usmail Meher carries sandstone slabs at a quarry in Jaisalmer district of Rajsathan. It is back-breaking work in the unforgiving desert and anybody would be happy when the day's work is done. Not Usmail. For when it is evening and time to go home, he has to go through a bigger ordeal. His 40-year-old wife Hakima is waiting for him to return from work. Usmail is just 16.

Tragedy struck Usmail six years ago when he was studying in Class V. A bright boy, he was one of the few who could read and write in Revari village on the Jaisalmer-Barmer highway. One day, his father Barsa Khan told Usmail that he would have to marry Hakima, his dead cousin's 34-year-old fiancee. The significance of the words escaped the boy of 10. "I did not know what was happening. The elders told me to be happy," he recalls. A few days later, Usmail and Hakima were married.

In a convoluted attempt to retain purity of lineage, Muslims of the Meher caste in Rajasthan's Jaisalmer and Barmer districts prefer to marry their daughters within the caste. Men are allowed to marry outside the caste, making it more difficult to find eligible grooms. The community's stress on finding a Meher groom is a compelling reason for parents to settle for whatever is available. And little boys become unsuspecting victims of this obnoxious custom when they are married to women almost three times their age.

Imana, 20	Imam Faqir, 9
When Imana's fiance died in an accident, his brother Imam was forced to fill in for him to fulfil the agreement between the two families. He doesn't even know what marriage means.

Sometimes an agreement between two families to exchange daughters for their sons causes the mismatch in ages. Things can go awry even if the ages are compatible. Since the mortality rate in the region is quite high, it often happens that a prospective groom dies and is replaced by a younger boy in the marriage. But most of the time, the oddity is the result of a community ignoring compatibility of age for the sake of social convenience. Says Mumtaz Ben, a social worker based in Barmer: "Such a marriage is the worst violation of human rights."

Usmail is not alone in this torturous predicament. Many other castes are now following in the footsteps of the Mehers. In Nimba ki Basti village of Jaisalmer district, nine-year-old Imam Faqir had to step in to fulfil his family's contractual agreement when his brother, who was engaged to 20-year-old Imana died in an accident. In Bacche ki Dhani village, when the sarpanch Hamji could not find a match for her granddaughters Meen Bai, 30, and Marium, 25, she settled for their pre-teen first cousins. Meen is married to Baria Khan, 11, while Marium will soon marry nine-year-old Jakharia Khan.

There are sinister undercurrents of this human tragedy. Often the marriage of an older woman to a young boy is a front that facilitates her exploitation. Barely seven months after Usmail's marriage, his wife Hakima delivered a baby girl. Usmail was 11 at the time and it was clear that he had not consummated the marriage. Such was his innocence that he could not even understand why people taunted him for not being the father of his wife's child.

Jakharia Khan, 9	Marium, 25
After all attempts to find grooms for Marium and her sister Meen within the Faqir caste failed, their grandmother chose their first cousins Jakharia and his elder brother Baria, 11.

Two years later, Usmail realised what was going on and reacted in the most unfortunate manner by battering the two-year-old girl to death with a stone. He was arrested and sent to a juvenile home in Jodhpur. "It was not my child," he says blankly, the burden of his own trauma making him incapable of remorse. He was acquitted in 2001 because of his age.

More such tragedies are unfolding as a result of this blinkered attempt to follow a tradition. In Barmer district two years ago, a woman in her mid-20s committed suicide by jumping into a well along with her two children. Her husband was considerably younger and in his teens. Police believe that her father-in-law used to send his son away to work in distant places and sexually exploit her in his absence. "We were told that she was fed up with the situation," says a police officer. The father-in-law was arrested and charged with abetment to suicide but was eventually released for lack of any solid evidence.

Sadly, even though these mismatched marriages violate the Child Marriage (Restraint) Act, the police prefer not to burden themselves with these cases. On the contrary, they act against people who are working to stop these abhorrent practices. Last year, when India Today reported how older men were marrying young girls in Barmer, a police officer used it to instigate attacks on social workers quoted in the report. "Please don't quote us in the story," pleads a social worker. Even educated youth who find the custom wrong decline to speak up against it in the media for fear of reprisals.

Meanwhile, Usmail continues to work at the quarry, carrying the burden of his shattered dreams on his slim shoulders.