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| Child brides in India |
A new type of sex tourism was exposed in India, where wealthy Muslim foreigners are buying up women for “one month marriages”, according to press reports in the United Kingdom.
A 17-year-old girl has revealed the new type of Islamic sexual tourism in India, where Muslim men from the Middle East and Africa are buying women for sex, but just for one month.
Activists for the rights of Muslim women, said that the short term "marriage" is illegal in India, and forbidden in Islam, which are increasing in Hyderabad, a city in southern India, where wealthy foreigners and government appointed imams, are exploiting poverty among Muslim families in the city.
The victim, Nausheen Tobassum revealed the extent of the problem when she ran away from home last month after her parents pressured her to consummate a forced marriage with a middle-aged Sudanese man who had paid about $1,800 to purchase her for one month.
She told police that she had been taken by her aunt in a hotel where she and three other teenagers were presented to a Sudanese oil company executive. The man, Usama Ibrahim Mohammed, 44, married with two children in Khartoum, later came to her house, where an imam held a wedding ceremony.
The wedding certificate stated that the marriage expires at the end of one month.
"The next day, the man came to the house of the girl and demanded to have sex with his new wife, but she refused," a local police officer told a leading British newspaper.
Her parents assured the man that they would persuade their daughter to have sex and said they would punish the girl if she refused. The girl then ran out of her small apartment in Hyderabad and she alerted police. Police arrested the man, aunt of the victim and the imam. Police have also issued an arrest warrant for her parents. Nausheen is a minor, therefore, under Indian law she cannot marry until age 18. Her parents are in hiding, but were charged with organizing a child marriage, violating the modesty of a woman, and conspiracy.
“This man is an animal. In any society, this practice would be considered cruel and inhuman. I am glad to see that police in India have started taking these offenses more seriously, and I hope this practice is completely stopped,” Timothy Cook, 47, of Seattle, Washington told YourJewishNews.com after learning about the charges.
The police officer also said there are dozens of illegal marriages of short-term contracts in the city, and that the Sudanese man arrested had come to Hyderabad after a friend in Khartoum said that he had purchased a wife of one month in the city.