There was a King named Narkashur. Nakrashur had a false belief that in his dream Lord Shiva had asked him to marry 16,000 girls for his liberation. Therefore, Narkashur started to pick all the girls in his country. He married and made a prison where every girl will be kept as a prisoner and he would do anything to them as he wished. Definitely, his state was small so there were no 16,000 girls in his state. He started to kidnap girls from the whole Aaryawarth (Indian Subcontinent). Since Narkashur was quite strong, no other country could help their girls from getting kidnapped. At that time Krishna was known for his practice for giving justice to people and killing the person who does sin. So, the kings gathered at Krishna’s palace at Dwarika for help.
Krishna didn’t have a strong army and he neither wanted war, as he always believed war kills a lot of innocent people. So with his one wife and very few other people he went to Narkashur’s country as if he was there for a visit. He did a grand political play over there and finally killed Narkashur and released 16,000 girls. Since the girls were already kind of married to Narkashru and they were in a dilemma that the society will not accept them. The girls were there at Narkashur’s place as if they were in hell. They never felt like they would ever get released from there as Narkashur was a very powerful King, but Krishna did that. All the girls were so grateful for Krishna that they accepted him as their lover and they loved Krishna deeply. And Krishna’s nature was that he never avoided any kind of love, he always insisted that love must not be limited. He believed that relationship and responsibility are on one hand and love is eternal. Not just that, Krishna stayed at that state for some months, uplifted the economy of that state, and made all the girls independent and finally returned to his state. This is misinterpreted as Krishna had a relationship with 16,000 girls which is kind of not true. It was an incident and a situation that made Krishna a lover of 16,000 girls. This story is a hint from the book, I am Krishna, Volume 5 by Deep Trivedi. You can learn in detail the story and other life stories of Krishna in this book. This story is actually written in the original Mahabharata too.
In short, Krishna had married 8 girls so he is the husband of 8 wives. They are Rukmini, Satyabhama, Jambavati, Kalindi, Mitravinda, Nagnajiti, Bhadra, and Lakshmana.
