After crackdown, Hyderabad’s infamous ‘bride bazaar’ moves online

Fatima* is decked up for her wedding day. An embellished kameez under the burqa and a bold lip, modestly hidden behind the veil. But her cheeks are washed out. There’s no new-bride twinkle in her eyes.This marriage, after all, isn’t one for the albums. She signed up for it only to get her ailing grandmother out of hospital and put her younger sister through school. The 22-year-old’s prospective groom — close to three times her age — has promised ₹2 lakh for this nikah and for her to be sent to him in Oman.Fatima is just another bride from the bazaars of Hyderabad’s Old City that continue to flourish and cater to rich Arab clients, albeit stealthily. These “transactions” have now resurfaced online.Instead of shady halls and hotels, these marriages are now performed on WhatsApp, with many claiming “business” is better than ever.Famously chronicled in Bazaar, the 1982 film starring Smita Patil, Naseeruddin Shah and Farooq Shaikh, this decades-old “trade” of young girls being wedded to aged men with deep pockets — often for just a few weeks — had slowed down post a series of crackdowns in 2018. Many even assumed it had died out. But, as Fatima’s tale and those others suggest, they were mistaken.Fatima’s wedding venue was right in the middle of the road. “They asked me to go to Mysuru with them to complete the nikah… I got scared and refused,” the stoic Fatima told TOI, stepping out of an autorickshaw that had pulled up on the side of a crowded Chadrayangutta market where she had been dropped off an hour ago.“They” here are agents — two burly men in an SUV — who had set up Fatima’s videoconference-nikah inside the car. The agents’ fee: ₹50,000 to ₹1 lakh.Now, with the deal called off, the young woman must wait for her next proposal. medium114047679“At least 20 to 30 such weddings are happening every month,” said Hussain*, who has been brokering such marriages for years now. “If not me, someone else will do it… there’s tremendous demand,” he nonchalantly puts it, showing off his phone gallery that has at least half-a-dozen photos and videos of young girls “shortlisted” for these nikahs. The girls are between 18 and 25 years old.There’s a folder for grooms as well. Visibly wealthy Arab men looking for their next bride. And while many of them appear well past their 50s, their ID cards claim they aren’t a day older than 35, or 39 at best. Almost all are businessmen from Oman, Bahrain, Qatar, etc.“Unlike earlier when they travelled to Hyderabad to physically choose their bride, the entire process is online these days. The men are sent photographs of the girls and once they make their selection, agents on both sides strike a deal. Then a date is fixed, a qazi is taken on a video call — most of them are from Hyderabad or Mumbai — and the nikah is completed,” Hussain explained.He was speaking in between answering a call from an agent in Oman who said that her client wasn’t happy with the photos of prospective brides sent to him. TOI listened in to the conversation: “…mere paas aur aisi bacchiyan hain… main bhejti hoon (I have more girls like this… I will send their photos),” the agent is heard saying, relaying to Hussain what she had told her client.Audio recordings and conversations with more young girls and their agents revealed that after these weddings, these women are sent to their husbands on tourist visas. What happens to them next is tough to hazard a guess on.“I had to run away from the house because I realised the man was too old and he had taken me there to keep me as a domestic help. I also got only ₹5,000 as opposed to the ₹2 lakh promised initially. The rest was siphoned off by the agents, including a lady in Oman who hosted us initially,” said Suhana*, another 20-something from the city who had to plead with her family back home to borrow some money to help her return.Burdened with the responsibility of another four siblings and a huge debt to repay, Suhana is, ironically, looking for another Arab groom now.“Such stories are plenty. Of men using them for a while and then reducing them to being domestic workers, an entire family — father and sons — exploiting one girl, or these young brides simply being abandoned after a few months,” said the broker, admitting that nobody looks back on a case, once the girl is shipped off to her ‘client’. mediumIncidentally, many of those brokering these deals on behalf of the ‘grooms’ are survivors themselves, say social activists working in the Old City.Jameela Nishat, founder of the Hyderabad-based Shaheen’s Women Resource and Welfare Association that works on rehabilitating vulnerable Muslim women, termed this “human trafficking guised as marriages”.“Poor and impoverished adolescent girls and women above 18 are succumbing to sexual abuse through this practice. It is an unfortunate reality. We need stringent laws and policies that are sensitive to the issues of women and help in closing down such illegal trafficking methods,” she said.A senior officer of Telangana police who had cracked down on these grooms and brokers in 2018 — and even put some behind bars — stressed the need for continuous monitoring “to keep this trade under check”.“When we went after them, these men used to come to Hyderabad on tourist visas, marry some poor girl — many of them minors — have fun for 15 to 20 days and then flee the country. We had found that at the time of nikah, they slyly got the girls to sign talaq papers as well, to make their escape easy,” said the senior cop.“It took us some time to develop a network of informants, identity hotels where these nikahs were performed and then nab the offenders. But now it’s very tough to trap the culprits because the entire process is online. Brokers and visa agents must be closely monitored and local public representatives must be involved, to arrest this activity,” the cop added.* Names changed on request