Author: IANS
Publication: The New Indian Express
Date: May 26, 2004
URL: http://www.newindpress.com/Newsitems.asp?ID=IEO20040526040643&Title=This+is+India&Topic=0&Full~Story
Police here have arrested a 73-year-old
Arab for deserting his teenage wife after spending only two days with her
and prevented him from marrying for the sixth time.
Mohammed Jaffar Yaqoob Hasan Al
Jorani, 73, from Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), deserted 19-year-old
Haseena Begum after spending two days with her.
He was trying to marry another girl
when police in the Muslim dominated old city Chandrayangutta arrested him
and charged him with dowry harassment and cheating.
Police have also arrested a city-based
broker, Shamsuddin, 45, who helped Al Jorani find the bride.
A Chandrayangutta police official
said the two had been arrested on a complaint by Haseena Begum.
Inquiries revealed that Al Jorani
is a rich man but blind in one eye and suffering from various health problems.
He has been regularly flying to
Hyderabad to marry young girls and already has two wives -- Abeda, 60,
and Alia, 40, -- in the UAE.
Haseena got entrapped when the broker
Shamsuddin approached her father Sheikh Mahboob, a retired low rung government
employee, and offered Rs. 10,000 in return for his daughter's hand.
Mahboob, a father of six children,
accepted the proposal and the marriage was solemnised on May 7. The couple
was living in a rented house in Barkas in the city.
"After two days he told me he was
going back to the UAE and wanted a divorce. Shamsuddin also started harassing
us to return the money," said Haseena.
Subsequent inquiries by Haseena's
family revealed that he had already married five girls and ditched them.
Police said Al Jorani's passport
showed that he had made a number of trips to Hyderabad. He was being questioned
about the other girls he married in the city.
However, no other girl has filed
a complaint, a police official said.
The sordid incident is reminiscent
of the infamous Ameena case of 1991 when 11-year-old Ameena was married
to an Arab her grandfather's age. An airhostess on the Hyderabad-New Delhi
flight alerted the police who arrested the Arab and prevented him from
taking the girl abroad.
Ameena's story shook the conscience
of the nation and highlighted how young girls from poor families were victims
of contract marriages.
Thirteen years later, nothing has
changed. Poor families continue to get their daughters married to rich
older Arabs in the hope of a better life. That never happens. There are
no exact figures for such marriages being performed in the city though
everybody knows they continue to take place.
These contract marriages for a brief
period are still being performed even after religious scholars have declared
them un-Islamic.
Haseena's wedding was performed
by a Qazi, Ahmed Sharief, appointed by the state-run Wakf Board, without
going into the credentials of the Arab.
Her wedding could also have gone
unnoticed had she not complained.
