Hyderabad, April 30: Marriages are said to be made in heaven. It is supposed to be the best moment in a girl’s life. However, for poor girls from the Old City areas, being married off to old Arabs, it is nothing but a nightmare.
“Baba Nagar, Barkas, Idi Bazaar, Sultan Shahi are some of the areas notorious for such fixed-term matrimonial alliances. We found that in these Old City areas, 33 girls had been given away to old Arabs in muttah marriages,” said Jameela Nishat, who counsels and sensitises young women.
This is an organised racket here, where even police is reluctant to help.
It is being done with the support of an Old City-based political party.
Married wealthy sheikhs from Gulf nations come to the city and stay in hotels. They contact middlemen, who then fix a safe place to introduce girls from poor families.
“In most cases, the middlemen take half the mehr (bride price) given at the time of the nikah,” said Nishat.
“The whole system operates through a well-oiled network involving political leaders, travel agents, hotel owners, the middlemen and the qazi, who marries off these minor girls. There are too many people who have a stake in this.
It is difficult to break the nexus,” alleges Nishat, who started the Shaheen Women’s Resource and Welfare Association to fight against this malaise.
According to a report, about 33 marriages between old sheikhs and young girls are conducted every month.
“Flyby night old sheikhs come here for a few days only to marry the girls for short periods, sometimes just a single night. Marriage and divorce formalities are often prepared at the same time,” says Nishat adding, “Tragedy befalls the families when they find the sheikh has disappeared all of a sudden. Many of these girls have been married four, 10 and even 17 times, each wedding lasting not more than a fortnight.”
Earlier, the sheikhs reportedly took the brides to their countries where the girls ended up becoming maids, who were subjected to untold miseries.
However, the practice stopped when the Gulf nations restricted their citizens from bringing home a foreign bride unless they took prior permission from authorities.
“Parents are happy that the girl is married off to a wealthy sheikh but tragedy awaits them. The old Sheikh, closer in age to father or grandfather to the girl, consummates the marriage in some city hotel or in Mumbai and satisfies his lust. There are instances when girls below 13 years are married off to sheikhs as old as 70 years for a meagre amount of Rs 5000,” explains Nishat adding, “If she happens to be a virgin, she earns a lot more as Arabs are ready to spend extravagant amounts for firsttime sex.”
She alleges that even if the sheikh takes his bride to his country, the girl’s passport invariably gets confiscated and they end up working as ‘khaddamas’ (maid servants). “This is nothing but trafficking under the garb of marriage,” says Nishat.
“I know for a fact that the newly married girl not only signs the nikah paper but also the divorce paper. This is illegitimate, since there is no iddat period (40 days)… Its the worst possible exploitation of a Muslim girl,” she says.
She alleges that qazis are the main culprits as they commit a fraud rather than perform a marriage.
Nishat observes, “Police can easily keep track of movements of foreigners but they are not doing enough. Policemen and political leaders get their share and keep mum on the issue.”
Her volunteers, Shahida and Tasneem reportedly carried out a sting operation along with an undercover television reporter, where they visited a home where half a dozen other prospective brides were gathered.
“They were paraded before the Arab who would lift the girl’s burqa, run his fingers through her hair, gaze at her figure and converse through an interpreter,” says Shahida recalling the trauma.
It is a malaise which seems to have no solution in sight. The poor girl’s plight makes headlines for a while before apathy sets in and Hyderabad’s bride bazaar starts buzzing again.
–Agencies