700 brides get wooden bats to beat up alcoholic or abusive husbands

What would you generally gift a newly-married couple? A Madhya Pradesh minister decided on an unusual present — a mogri or a wooden bat - for nearly 700 brides at a mass marriage ceremony

Illustration/Ravi Jadhav

What would you generally gift a newly-married couple? A Madhya Pradesh minister decided on an unusual present — a mogri or a wooden bat - for nearly 700 brides at a mass marriage ceremony.

While the mogri is traditionally used to wash clothes, the minister has advised the brides to use it on their husbands if they turn alcoholic or harass them, and refuse to mend their ways.

The gifted mogri even bears the caption 'sharabiyon ke sutara hetu bhent, police nahi bolegi' (gift for beating drunkards, police will not intervene).

Gopal Bhargava, state minister of panchayati raj and rural development, gifted the bats to nearly 700 brides during a mass marriage ceremony solemnised on the auspicious on Saturday in his home town Garhakota in Sagar district.

The minister urged women to first have a word with their husbands and make them understand the ill effects of drinking, and if they don't listen, then let the mogri do the talking.

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