Author: G.S. Radhakrishna
Publication: The Telegraph
Date: September 20, 2004
URL: http://www.telegraphindia.com/1040920/asp/nation/story_3777797.asp?headline=Rape~in~name~of~marriage~+]~-->
Fifteen-year-old Anees Begum was
rescued from a Mumbai hotel yesterday hours before she was to board a Muscat-bound
flight to join her septuagenarian husband - an Arab sheikh.
By the time the police managed to
track her down, the teenager had been raped and abused by the sheikh's
aides for nearly three days.
Local kazis said the Anees was married
to Mattar Hameed Abdullah Al Gheilani on August 3 here. The sheikh stayed
in the city till the first week of this month, entertaining his poor in-laws
- Syed Bahsser, a banana vendor near Charminar, and wife Khurya Bee, a
domestic help. Anees is the third of six daughters and one son.
The sheikh left for Muscat but later
sent his aides to bring Anees to him.
On Thursday, Anees was taken to
Mumbai by the two men - S.A.S. Al Hasmhi and Hameed Mohammed. Little did
the teenager know that her escorts had been given the freedom to satiate
their lust before taking her to the sheikh.
In her statement after her return
here, the girl said she was raped by the two in a Mumbai hotel. "They kept
saying wait, wait, what is the hurry. Your sheikh has sent us to entertain
ourselves," she was told when she asked when they would take her to her
husband.
After three days of torture and
abuse, Anees rang up a number in Bhavaninagar here and pleaded that someone
should inform the police. Her alleged rapists were asleep then.
On coming to know of her plight,
R.P. Singh, the city police commissioner, rushed a team by flight to Mumbai.
After co-ordinating with the local police there, Anees and the the two
men were brought back here late last evening.
"My parents got a meher of Rs 5,000
and several days of entertainment with daru and chicken biryani as an exchange"
the girl said.
Initially, Anees did not want to
go back and live with her parents. "I know their pitiable condition but
I do not want to live with them."
The police have identified the kazi
who conducted the nikah as Sheikh Khaled Ali of Himayat Nagar. He had accepted
a CD recorder as a gift from the groom. "We are yet to arrest the kazi,"
said Mohammed Khan, the police inspector of Bhavaninagar.
Anees' case is not the first of
its kind in the city. On May 4 this year, 19-year-old Hasina Begum was
married off to a sheikh who dumped her a few days later.
It was also found that 73-year-old
Jafar Yakub Hasan Al Joorani, a native of Sharjah, had offered Rs 10,000
to Hasina's parents and was set to marry again. Investigations showed Joorani
had married thrice since landing in Hyderabad on May 3.
The once Arab refugee settlement,
Bar Khas, has become a den for petro rich Arabs in search of teenage girls,
who are lured with the hope of marriage to rich sheikhs.
