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Authorities rescued a 17-year-old girl from a passenger train bound for Rajasthan's Kota after being repeatedly raped by her in-laws and fleeing a forced marriage, police said on Sunday.

Kota's Child Welfare Committee (CWC) chairman Kaniz Fatima said Railway Protection Force (RPF) saved the teenage girl from the Gorakhpur Avadh Express train on Saturday afternoon. Childline brought her before the CWC later that evening.

The girl was initially in shock. But she started sharing her experience with the help of counseling.

India Today said the survivor was a guaduation second-year student in Deoria, Uttar Pradesh. Her parents and uncle forced her to marry a man from a neighboring village on Nov. 30, 2020, against her will.

Following the wedding, the girl said her husband's brother and sister-in-law's husband repeatedly raped her. When she told her husband and father-in-law about the situation, they said they had "purchased" her from her maternal uncle. They instructed her to do whatever they asked her.

When she refused, her husband and father-in-law took her to an undisclosed location. The victim added her brother-in-law and sister-in-law's husband took turns in raping her for months. The victim also claimed that they made a video of her naked and posted it on social media. The girl somehow managed to escape captivity and travel to her uncle's house in Deoria.

The victim requested that her uncle file a complaint against her husband and in-laws. But they reportedly prevented her from doing so. She ran away from her uncle's house on April 7. She believed her uncle could not lend a helping hand. Hence, she took the train the next day.

Ashok Yadav, a sub-inspector at Kota RPF told the media outlets they immediately notified the Railway Police as the Traveling Ticket Examiner believed the girl had run away from home. The Childline team then rescued the minor.

The CWC took note of the girl's ordeal after hearing her story. It also filed charges against the victim's relatives for allegedly "selling" her into marriage and her in-laws for physical exploitation.

Reports claim that one child in India goes missing every eight minutes. Millions of children go missing, resulting in forced labor, slavery, and sex labor. To solve the country's issue, the government unveiled an official website called "track child" to help the public track down lost children.

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UTTAR PRADESH, INDIA - AUGUST 2: The house where 15 year old Priyanka (name changed) was raped is seen on August 2, 2016 in Uttar Pradesh, India. She was raped by a neighbor last year when she was 14 years old. The neighbor had been harassing her for a long time and then one night he came on motorcycles with friends and threatened to kill her if she didn't get on the bike with him. He took her to a friend's house and raped her. For 10 days the police refused to register a case against him and when they did, they held her for two days in the station until she agreed to say in the statement that she went willingly with the him. Priyaka and her family say that he comes from a rich, influential family. The people in her village gossip, they say that she ran away willingly with him and that she did bad things. After the rape he continues to harass her, sending his friends to tell her that if he sees her he will kill her, that he will come and kidnap her sisters, that he will kill her father. Recently the rapist and his friends saw her father on the road and they beat up him. Two weeks ago Priyanka was wed to a 22 year old man in a marriage that her family arranged for her. They were worried about her safety and Priyanka thought that she would be safer if she was married and living in a different village. Her husband doesn't know about the rape, and the rapist has sent letters to her home threatening to tell her new family and break up the marriage. "I feel angry. There's nothing left in me." Priyanka says. Getty Images
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