An Indian bride walked out of her own wedding ceremony after the groom failed to solve a simple maths test, police in northern India said.
The bride in the state of Uttar Pradesh asked the groom to add 15 to 6. When he gave his answer as 17, she walked out of the ceremony.
The incident in Rasoolabad village near the heavily polluted city of Kanpur, prompted the groom’s relatives to plead with her to reconsider. She refused, saying that she had been misled about his level of education, leaving wedding guests and family members in the lurch.
“The groom’s family kept us in the dark about his poor education,” said Mohar Singh, the girl’s father. “Even a first-grader can answer this.”
Mr Singh said his daughter, Lovely, had been due to marry a man called Ram Baran on the evening of Wednesday, March 11. Just before the ceremony, she learnt that he was illiterate, prompting her to have reservations about the marriage, which was an arranged one.
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After she walked out, police were called in to help to mediate as the families returned gifts and jewellery that had already been exchanged.
Many Indian marriages are arranged by extended families with the participants rarely meeting, except briefly before the ceremony. Most of the ten million Indian weddings that take place every year in the country are held during the “wedding season”, a four-month period starting in December when cooler weather makes outdoor events more comfortable.
At another wedding in the western state of Gujarat last year, a guest was killed and four others were injured when a crane collapsed as the bride and her sister were being lowered into the ceremony on a diamond-shaped crystal platform.
The male guest, aged 40, was killed when the 40ft hydraulic crane toppled over on to guests at the wedding in Adalaj village outside Ahmedabad last February. It had been parked on muddy and uneven ground.