Six teenage mothers using tampered Aadhaar cards to show a higher age were discovered, thanks to the State government’s Pregnancy and Infant Cohort Monitoring and Evaluation (PICME) system in Denkanikottai.
On Wednesday, a 17-year-old girl was intercepted by Collector C. Dinesh Kumar at the Comprehensive Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (CEmONC) centre at the government hospital. He felt she looked younger, though she insisted she was 18. “She didn’t look 18. When I checked her ID, I noticed that she was 17 in March, when she got married, and was now two-months pregnant. An entry was made and a case under the Child Marriage Act and the POCSO Act will be registered,” he said.
The Collector’s visit followed the detection of six persons as underage mothers though their Aadhaar cards showed a different date of birth.
The PICME portal registers and tracks pregnancies to prevent infant and maternal deaths, and to bring all births into the institutional delivery system. PICME registration is mandatory to get a birth certificate.
According to Deputy Director of Health Services G. Ramesh Kumar, there had been six cases of underage mothers from Kelamangalam block. Two of them were carrying Aadhaar cards with dates of birth that did not match the ones shown on their Aadhaar ID on the UIDAI portal.
Recently, a 29-year-old man produced a tampered Aadhaar card for his wife, showing her age as 19, while the seeded Aadhaar identification mentioned her age as 14. Three Internet centres had abetted the forgery.
New system
The Health Department had since alerted the Tahsildar and the Collector. “Tampering was possible in the earlier system, where the PICME portal was manually fed using the ID produced by the mother. But on PICME 3.0, which is linked to the UIDAI portal, tampering is impossible,” Dr. Ramesh said. Once the Aadhaar number is keyed in, it will reveal all the details. “An OTP is sent to the phone number seeded to the Aadhaar number, without which we cannot proceed into the PICME portal,” said Sacharita, Block Medical Officer, Thally.
“I have apprised the UIDAI too about this, and complaints have been lodged against those Internet/photocopy centres and the Aadhaar cardholders, spouses and their families. We are registering cases invoking both the Child Marriage Act and the POCSO Act,” the officer added.
Last month, a man and his wife ended their lives after a case was registered against them for child marriage. Their 17-year-old daughter was married off to her maternal uncle, became pregnant, and underwent an abortion. “She had attempted suicide, and the private hospital where she was admitted alerted us. The girl was from a community we focus on in Bargur, because it has the highest incidence of teen marriages. Cases were registered against both families. That is how stringent we are in dealing with child marriages,” the Collector said.
Typically, any teenage pregnancy that comes into the hospital system for the mandatory PICME registration is routed through an AR entry at the hospital, where the police is intimated and a case is registered. The Health Department has been quietly intimating the police, and POCSO cases are being registered, Dr. Ramesh Kumar said.
“We’ve had experience of girls running off to Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh once the police get involved and then, tracking the pregnancies becomes difficult. It could also result in maternal mortality. So, we requested the police to wait till the mothers give birth to take action against their husbands and families,” he added.
Between April 2024 and March 2025, a total of 545 cases of child marriage were registered, which included migrant women. This, according to Dr. Ramesh Kumar, is probably the lowest in western Tamil Nadu, according to PICME data. The highest number of child marriages are reported in Kaveripattinam, Bargur, Shoolagiri, and Kelamangalam in Krishnagiri district.
(Assistance for overcoming suicidal thoughts is available on the State’s health helpline 104, Tele-MANAS 14416, and Sneha’s suicide prevention helpline 044-24640050)
Published – June 18, 2025 11:50 pm IST