Band baaja baraat but no bride in Himachal’s Una

A bridegroom along with his 90-member baraat (wedding procession) arrived at Singa village in Haroli sub division of Una district in Himachal Pradesh on Tuesday only to be told that there was no bride or trace of her house.

When the baraat from Nari Chalola village, also in Una district, landed up at Singa and enquired with villagers, they were told that there was no woman by the bride’s name and no wedding slated there either.

The shocked family of the groom, Raman Kumar, 32, showed a photo of the bride, and the villagers confirmed she was not from Singa. Raman works as a daily-wager at his native village, which is 45km away.

Village pradhan Gurdev Singh said, “We were surprised to find the marriage procession arrive when no wedding was scheduled here. I immediately informed the police.”

“The matchmaker is the groom’s cousin’s wife. She had shown his family the so-called bride’s photo by downloading it from social media, claiming she belonged to a poor family of Singa. When the baraat arrived, she told them that the bride had consumed poison and was hospitalised in neighbouring Punjab’s Nawanshahr (Shaheed Bhagat Singh Nagar) and that she was headed there,” he said.

Last month, a Dubai-returned groom and his entourage of 150 ‘baraatis’ were shocked when they arrived in Punjab’s Moga only to find his bride missing and that the wedding venue did not exist.

Deepak Kumar, 24, who returned to Jalandhar from Dubai in November to marry Manpreet Kaur, who he had been talking to on Instagram for three years, but had never met, the police said. After the incident, the groom lodged a complaint against Manpreet.

The groom said that he worked as a labourer in Dubai and their parents had arranged the wedding over phone calls, police said, adding he also claimed to have transferred ₹50,000 to her earlier.