Jasvinder Sanghera was born and educated in Britain but her parents still wanted her to marry a man of their choice. They expected the teen-ager to follow in the footsteps of her sisters and enter an arranged marriage with a man they had chosen for her when she was a young girl.

When she was 15 and in her final year of school in Derby, they showed her a photograph of a man they had chosen for her when she was aged 8. She was told that she was to marry him within a matter of weeks. Despite her refusal, her parents continued to plan the wedding and kept her locked in her bedroom.

Then she seized an opportunity to flee the family home and the prospect of marriage against her wishes.

“I ran away when I was 16 because I would not marry the man they had chosen for me. My parents said that in their eyes ‘I was dead’.” She said that in her family’s eyes and in those of the wider community, her refusal to enter had been dishonourable. Even today if she sees her brother or sisters, they cross the street to avoid her.

Ms Sanghera, who is now 42 and divorced with three children, set up Karma Nirvana, a refuge for South Asian women fleeing forced marriage and domestic abuse. She says that there is a fine line between arranged and forced marriage.

“I know many young people who have gone through an arranged marriage for the sake of their family. If the youngster knows they could be killed or disowned for refusing to enter an arranged marriage, they will go through with it. But that is not an arranged marriage at all. In reality, it is a forced marriage”, she said.

Girls as young as 14 were taken abroad for marriages, she said. “Their families bring them back to the UK and then go out again when they are 16 to consummate the marriage.

“In one case a girl who was almost 15 was forced to marry a older man who raped her to conceive a child to make the marriage work.”

In other cases people become “reluctant sponsors” to husbands or wives from abroad. “They are told to sponsor the person ‘for the sake of the family’ but it is just a way of getting a person into the country.”

She is willing to confront the link between forced marriage, immigration and the removal of girls from secondary schools for extended holidays on the Indian sub-continent. “There is no doubt in my mind that forced marriage is used as an immigration route, and young girls are leaving school for supposed holidays when they are being taken abroad for marriage.”