'Illegal Bride Bazaar' Thriving In Hyderabad Old City

‘Young Girls Subjected To Sexual Exploitation By Foreign ‘Husbands’ Before Being Dumped’. Contrary to popular perception, the age-old bride bazaar continues to flourish on the back of a well-oiled network of brokers in the poverty-stricken parts of the Old City in Hyderabad, with Muslim women increasingly falling victims to the trade. Activists say that till date, thousands of young women have been married off to cash-rich foreign nationals and the lives of many more are at stake. 
    
Expert Activists say that the so-called husbands, hailing not just from West Asia but from African nations like Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia, buy brides for a paltry sum, use them as sex slaves for a fortnight or a month in hotels and lodges and then fly back solo to their countries. “A girl once sold and abandoned loses her right to a dignified life. Most families that benefited from them shy away from supporting them as do the police,” says Jameela Nishat, who runs the Shaheen Resource Centre for Women in the Sultan Shahi area of Old City. 
    
Activists maintain that the ‘grooms’ subject the girls to unimaginable sexual abuse while ensuring they do not get pregnant. After some days, they label them as unchaste and dump them. There are several women, who after falling into the trap once, are forced to marry foreign nationals again as they are left with no other option to eke out a living. “There are several victims who became pimps but there are also others who have learnt some skills and are surviving on their earnings,” Nishat adds. 
    
But the fate of many others, like the 15-year-old girl from Moghalpura who recently sought police protection after she was married off to a 45-year-old Sudanese national, is uncertain. Though she is currently lodged at a rescue home, activists say that in many cases the condition of the girls in state-run homes is no better. 
    
It is the middlemen or pimps who make the most money in this trade. Mostly local men, they know the financial condition of families living in the bastis and lure them with gifts and money. After the deal is done, these brokers, who may also be autorickshaw drivers doubling up as brokers, take away 75 per cent of the money and give the smaller share to the parents. 
    
Mazher Hussain of the Confederation of Voluntary Associations (COVA) maintains that these sham marriages are nothing but a form of trafficking with the sanction of parents. “Some elements are misusing the religious sanction of nikah,” he says. 
    
Activists say that while Muslim Personal Law board states that a Muslim can marry more than one woman, the clause that you do justice to all of them is conveniently overlooked. 
    
Activists say that currently, areas like Vattepally, Golconda, Kalapather, Babanagar, Tadbun, Talabkutta, Shaheennagar and Barkas are the hotbeds for the trade. However,Hussain says that initially, marriages involving Arabs used to happen in Barkas which was inhabited mainly by the Chaush community who are the direct descendants of the Hadhrami Arab military men and bodyguards hailing from the Hadhramaut region of the then South Arabia, now part of the Republic of Yemen. “It used to be a marriage between relatives but it took a different form over the years,” he adds. 
    
But now, says Rafia Nausheen, an activist working with the NGO Mahita, girls are being treated as a burden and in poor families, the priority is to get rid of them at the earliest. “If proposals where there are no demands from the groom’s side come, they fall into the trap,” she says and adds, 
    
“After the marriage is finalised, girls are not allowed to step out of their houses and so not many cases come out in the open prior to the wedding. For instance, a young girl who went to Dubai as a maid was forcibly married and sexually harassed. She was about to be sold off to another man when she ran away and managed to come back to Hyderabad.”