Kochi: Poor Muslim women in Kerala are increasingly becoming victims of an organised network of touts which arranges their weddings to aged married men from neighbouring Maldives.
"There is an organised network of touts and middlemen who arrange such weddings," social worker and Latin Catholic Aikya Vedi President Tony Oliver said.
The women return home soon after their marriage, complaining of ill-treatment, he said.
Last week, police swooped down on a wedding in Thiruvanathapuram and arrested a 43-year-old groom, Haroon Abdul Rasheed, when he came to the hut of a 17-year-old bride to exchange wedding vows.
Rasheed had come to Thiruvananthapuram from Maldives for medical treatment and identified a "suitable" bride through a tout.
A case has been registered against the 'groom' under the Child Marriage Restraint act, 1929 and sect 420 IPC (Cheating) and he has been remanded to custody, police said.
During interrogation, the man admitted that he is already married and has six children back home.
The menace of has reached to such an extent that the Jaamat council at Vallakkadavu, a Muslim dominated area in Thiruvanathapuram, has complained to the Consulate of Maldives about the free-wheeling marriages being indulged in by the visiting Maldivian men and the plight of deserted women.
President of the Council, Saifuddin Hajee, said the organisation has launched an awareness campaign in the community against the "illegal marriages".
Hajee said most of the Maldivians come for medical treatment in the city. These men marry local girls with the help of middle men. In some cases, the girls are also used as personal nurses for the treatment period and later deserted when the men leave for home.
The Maldivian men promise cash and happy life to the girls belonging to poor families.
"However, the brides are in most cases taken for a ride after the wedding as promises are never kept," Oliver said.
According to official figures, about 10,000 people from the Islamic Republic of Maldives are present in Kerala at any given point of time. Thiruvanathapuram is the closest city to Male, capital of Maldivian islands. Many Maldivians visit the state for medical treatment, education and business.
The story of 28-year-old Mumtaz from a place near Thiruvanathapuram, who returned from Maldives after few years of marriage, was no different.
Mumtaz was married to 55-year-old man at the age of 16.
The groom was not only physically handicapped, but also deaf and had claimed before marriage that he owned two ships in Maldives.
However, after marriage, she found that her husband was a fisherman. He had given Rs 5,000 as 'mehr' to her parents, while the agent had received Rs 20,000 for broking the deal.
In another incident, Oliver said, a Maldivian man, who had come to Kerala for kidney transplant, got married to an 18-year-old local girl and even managed to get one of her kidneys transplanted to him. However, the groom died after a month.
In most of the cases, such brides are forced to return to their home state following hardship and ill-treatment, Oliver said. "If they give birth to girls, they are sent back with the daughters, but if they have a son, the boy is not allowed to return with his mother," he said.
In some cases, the victims of such marriages have returned to Kerala and "are now making easy money by becoming the touts' agents," Oliver said.
Besides Kerala, girls from Nagercoil and Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu are also falling to such wedding traps, he said.
According to member of the Kerala State Gender Board T. N. Seema, the most effective way to prevent these weddings was by ensuring that all marriages are registered with local bodies,
irrespective of the community.
"It is also important that religious leaders and community heads take initiative to ensure that young women from their communities are not exploited," Seema, also a member of the CPI(M) state committee said.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment