Suffering from abject poverty, Indian parents are putting their daughters in short-term marriages with wealthy Muslim tourists for money.
“In India the girls are coming for a cheaper rate and they are beautiful,” Inspector Vijay Kumar told The Telegraph.
“Even if they are only staying for a few days they are doing this kind of illegal marriages for sex.”
Many Indian families are putting their daughters in contracted marriages for short periods with wealthy Muslim travelers.
One of girls engaged in this kind of marriages was Nausheen Tobassum, a 17-year-old girl from Hyderabad in southern India.
Tobassum escaped a one-month marriage arranged by her family with a wealthy Sudanese tourist.
“I had to show courage to go to police against my parents,” she told The Telegraph.
“I don’t want to go back to my home, I am scared.”
The 44-year-old groom, married with two children in Khartoum, had paid around £1,200 for his would-be Indian wife for four weeks.
The story began when the young Indian girl was accompanied by her aunt to a hotel to be introduced with three other girls to the Sudanese man.
The man had paid 100,000 Rupees (around £1,200) to the girl’s aunt, who in turn paid 70,000 Rupees to her parents, 5,000 Rupees to the imam who conducted the marriage, 5,000 Rupees to an Urdu translator and kept 20,000 Rupees for herself.
Haram
A wedding certificate was prepared with fixed terms of divorce at the end of the groom’s holiday.
“I didn’t know what was happening and I agreed in ignorance. They forced me,” Tobassum said.
“They changed my date of birth certificate and made a fake one, where I was shown as 24 years old.”
Terrified by the situation, the would-be wife escaped and went to the police to report the incident.
“They exploit girls and that’s why I went to police,” she said.
The police arrested the groom, the victim’s aunt and the imam and issued a warrant for her parents’ arrest.
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,” she said.
“Thirty to forty percent of families are going for the option of contract marriages to relieve their poverty. It has to be stopped.”
Marriage in Islam is of utmost importance as it is upon the lawful union of a man and a woman that society grows strong and that moral is preserved.
The majority of the Prophet’s Companions hold the view that after the completion of the Islamic legislation, mut`ah marriage was made absolutely haram.
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