Patna: Setting a new example for society, a man in Bihar arrived for his wedding on a traditional bullock cart in order to cut wedding expenses. The wedding was solemnised at the Puranaganj village in Purnia district of Bihar earlier this week.

Hundreds of villagers were left pleasantly surprised when Makhmur Shakir Ansari rode a tastefully-decorated bullock cart to fetch his bride Tarana Kausar. Ansari is a graduate in mass communication while Tarana is a graduate in Urdu.

The idea was not to get publicity but to convey a strong message to a society in a country where wasteful expenditures during wedding functions are common. But in this case, the entire wedding cost only Rs2,000 (Dh112).

Not only did the groom use a bullock cart, but vegetarian food was arranged for the guests — who numbered 25 in total.

“I wanted to set an example for the society and hence I opted for a bullock cart for my wedding procession to reach the bride’s home,” said Ansari, a school teacher in Delhi who says he is immensely impressed by the Bihar government’s campaign against dowry.

He said wedding function expenses have left many families penniless. “Hence I take it as my responsibility to make the masses aware about conducting simple marriages,” he said.

Ansari is not alone. On Tuesday another Muslim villager Maulana Firoz Alam, a resident of Banka district in Bihar, announced he was returning a dowry of Rs200,000 he had taken during the time of his wedding. Alam had married Busara Khatoon, the daughter of a school teacher, in 2016.

Last month another villager, Harindra Singh from central Bihar’s Bhojpur district, returned the dowry he had been given during his son’s wedding to his daughter-in-law’s family, inspired by the anti-dowry campaign launched by the state government. Singh had taken Rs400,000.

The developments come after the state government launched a vigorous campaign against dowry on October 2 to coincide with the 148th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and also asked residents to not attend any wedding where dowry had been taken. The government also launched a campaign against child marriages, which are quite prevalent in the state.

“The dream of development will always remain unfulfilled until these two social evils are eradicated from the society,” chief minister Nitish Kumar had said at the time.

An official report said around 25,000 women were either killed or committed suicide due to dowry harassment by their in-laws between 2012 and 2014 in India, with Uttar Pradesh (7,048 deaths) reporting the highest number of deaths, closely followed by Bihar (3,830 deaths). This information was provided to the Lok Sabha by federal minister Maneka Gandhi.

Around 30,000 cases of dowry were registered during the same period under the Dowry Prohibition Act.