Two 19-year-old girls have been found hanged after they were forced to marry against their will in India.
Police discovered Asha Shrikant Burud and Swati Umesh Zanjare hanging from a tree in a jungle and instantly described their deaths as suicide. The two young women were married off in a mass ceremony at the start of the month in Ambegaon taluka, western India, and had gone missing 10 days later.
Their families, from the village of Asane, last saw them when they set off to gather wood and fruit in a nearby forest and reported them missing three days ago.
Police said they probably committed suicide because they were married off against their wishes.
Inspector Girish Dighavkar of the Ghodegaon police station said, ‘Based on the primary investigation, we believe that the two have committed suicide.
