\'1-month wives\' sold in India

Muslim women’s rights activists claim that Muslim men from Africa and the Middle East are making the journey to Hyderabad, India to buy young and underage girls on a 'one-month lease' for sex. According to British newspaper The Telegraph, government-assigned Muslim clerics (Qazi’s) and the families of the girls are selling them off to wealthy foreigners and sex tourists for a short period of time. Nausheen Tobassum, a 17–year-old victim who escaped from her home last March and exposed the sex trafficking, claims that her parents had pressured her to have sex with a Sudanese middle-aged man who had paid around £1,800 to marry her for the month. Tobassum alerted the police who arrested the groom, her aunt who had arranged the wedding and the Qazi who performed the ceremony, while a warrant has been issued for the parent’s arrest. Short-term contract wives are illegal in India and forbidden in Islam, but Muslim men travel to India because they believe it is a permissible alternative to seeking a prostitute. Disadvantaged families agree to the contracts because they cannot afford to pay for weddings. Instead, they marry their daughters to a number of men for one-month to raise money for their real weddings. Speaking to The Telegraph, Shiraz Amina Khan of Hyderabad's Women and Child Welfare Society, said there were up to 15 'contract marriages' in the city every month and that the number is rising. "They come to Hyderabad because it has maximum downtrodden families. Thirty to 40 percent of families are going for the option of contract marriages to relieve their poverty. It has to be stopped," she said.