Campaigners for Muslim women's rights said while
short term 'contract marriages' are illegal in India and
forbidden in Islam, they are increasing in Hyderabad, in southern India, where
wealthy foreigners, local agents and 'Qazis' – government-appointed Muslim
priests – are exploiting poverty among the city's Muslim families.
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| Nausheen Tobassum |
The victim, Nausheen Tobassum, revealed the scale of
the problem when she escaped from her home last month after her parents
pressured her to consummate a forced marriage to a middle aged Sudanese man
who had paid around £1,200 for her to be his 'wife' for four weeks.
She told police she had been taken by her aunt to a
hotel where she and three other teenage girls were introduced to a Sudanese oil
company executive. The 'groom', Usama Ibrahim Mohammed, 44 and married with two
children in Khartoum, later arrived at her home where a Qazi performed a
wedding ceremony.
According to Inspector Vijay Kumar he had paid
100,000 Rupees (around £1,200) to the girl's aunt Mumtaz Begum, who in turn
paid 70,000 Rupees to her parents, 5,000 Rupees to the Qazi, 5,000 Rupees to an
Urdu translator and kept 20,000 Rupees herself. The wedding certificate came
with a 'Talaknama' which fixed the terms of the divorce at the end of the
groom's holiday.
"The next day he came to the house of the
victim girl and asked her to participate in sex but she refused. She is a young
girl and the groom is older than her father," Inspector Kumar told The
Telegraph.
Her parents reassured him they would persuade their
daughter and told her she would be punished if she did not. Instead she ran out
of their tiny one room home in Hyderabad's Moghulpuri neighbourhood and was
rescued by a police patrol. The police arrested the groom, the victim's aunt
and the Qazi, and issued a warrant for her parents' arrest – Nausheen is a
minor under Indian law and cannot marry until she reaches 18. Her parents are
now in hiding but will be charged with arranging a child marriage, 'outraging
the modesty' of a woman, and criminal conspiracy.
Inspector Kumar said there are dozens of illegal
short term contract marriages in the city, and that the Sudanese man they
arrested had come to Hyderabad after a friend in Khartoum told him he had taken
a '40 day wife' during an earlier visit.
"If a Sudanese wants to have sex, he has to pay
three times more [in Sudan] because there are far fewer girls there, or he
takes a second wife. In India the girls are coming for a cheaper rate and they
are beautiful. Even if they are only staying for a few days they are doing this
kind of illegal marriages for sex," he said.
He said the visitors want to marry because they
believe prostitution is forbidden under Islam. Poor families agree to contract
marriages because they have many daughters and cannot afford to pay for all
their weddings.
Instead, they have a series of one-month contract
'marriages' to fund their own genuine wedding.
Shiraz Amina Khan of Hyderabad's Women and Child
Welfare Society, said there were up to 15 'contract marriages' in the city
every month and that the number is rising.
"They come to Hyderabad because it has maximum
downtrodden families. Thirty to forty per cent of families are going for the
option of contract marriages to relieve their poverty. It has to be
stopped," she said.
Nausheen Tobassum, who is now living in a government
home for girls said in an interview before she was placed in care, that she had
filed a complaint to stop the same thing happening to other girls.
"I didn't know what was happening and I agreed
in ignorance. They forced me. They changed my date of birth certificate and
made a fake one, where I was shown as 24 years old. They exploit girls and
that's why I went to police. I had to show courage to go to police against my parents.
I don't want to go back to my home, I am scared," she said.
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