A Gulf reunion sparks requests to police for more in Hyderabad

The incident has raised the hopes of many youngsters in the region, now in their 20s and 30s, who were separated from their Gulf-based fathers under similar circumstances. “There have been many inquiries since the Nazia Sayeed case. People are coming to us with an old photograph or an incomplete address in the Gulf. We will see what we can do,” said south zone Deputy Commissioner of Police V Satyanarayana.

Police stations in Chandrayan Gutta, Charminar, Hussaini Alam and Mir Chowk have received 30 such requests. “We have directed the callers to the south zone office,” said an official at the Charminar police station. A majority of the areas where such marriages took place, and reportedly continue to take place on a smaller scale, fall in the south zone of Hyderabad.

Following the requests, the police have identified more than 25 ‘shadi khanas (marriage halls)’ and ‘qazis’ in Barkas, Chandrayan Gutta and Tolichowki areas of Hyderabad, where “hundreds” of such marriages between local women and “rich sheikhs” took place between 1980-2000. Most of these marriages, referred to as ‘contract marriages’ in these parts, lasted anywhere between three to six months, before the men returned to their countries, abandoning their new brides.

Salaam’s father was 34 when he married his mother Salma in Yakutpura in Hyderabad. Salaam is banking on a nikahnama (marriage certificate) and his father’s passport number to find him.

“My father married my mother in 1988 and stayed in India for three months, before leaving for Oman alone. After nearly six months he came to know that my mother was pregnant with me through a relative. He then sent my mother a letter that he would return and take her to Oman with him,” said Salaam.

After 28 years of separartion, Nazia Sayeed with daughters Ayesha and Fatima at the DCP’s office in Hyderabad. Express photo

“But due to heavy rains my mother’s house in Yakutpura, where she lived with her parents, partially collapsed and they had to leave. She did leave an address with the neighbours though. When my father eventually came and realised that my mother had shifted home, he didn’t try to find her and left. I was born a few weeks after that and have had no contact with my father ever. I hope the police contacts the Oman embassy and helps me get an address for my father,” Salaam says.

After waiting for a few years, Salma’s parents married her to a rickshaw-puller.

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Salma’s story finds resonance in another part of Hyderabad, Sultan Shahi, where Waseem Sheikh has been struggling with the questions of her 16-year-old daughter Sania Sheikh. “For many years she asked me about her father but I had no answers. Now she has stopped asking and refuses to call me her mother, because there is no father,’’ says the 33-year-old, who works for an NGO.

In 2000, when Waseem was just 17, her parents got her married to Mohammed Abdullah, who claimed to be a “rich sheikh” from Dubai. In the six days that she stayed with her husband in a hotel near Moazzam Jahi market, the teenager learned that she was Abdullah’s third wife. Abdullah was married to another woman from Hyderabad and had two children with her. His first wife and two children lived in Dubai.

Read | 28 years after separation, two Dubai women find mother in Hyderabad

“On the sixth day of our marriage he asked me to go home and fetch my things, so that we could leave for Dubai. That was the last time I saw him. After a few months I realised I was pregnant but there was no way of tracing him. The Dubai address that he had given me was fake. Later someone informed me that he had died in an accident. I don’t know whether that is true but for the sake of my daughter I want to find out what happened to him,” said Waseem. The 33-year-old has now approached the police for help through her NGO, Shaheen.

“The recent case has given us hope that my daughter may find her father,” she says.

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“Education and access to mobile phones and the internet has made youngsters very aware. It has also revived the hopes of children who have been abandoned by their fathers living in the Gulf, of being reunited with them,” says Jameela Nishat of NGO Shaheen, that works for women’s rights.

“Most of these children want closure, they want to find out where their fathers are. Though I am not sure if they will actually get in touch with their fathers. Just like we did in the Dubai sisters’ case, we are looking at marriage venues, passport numbers etc. But it will be difficult to find the current locations of these men since they live abroad,” said additional DCP Babu Rao said.