Wedding party publicly beaten by bride’s family

The groom and his family camped out in a graveyard for 16 hours.

MULTAN:

A wedding party was beaten and turned out on the street by the bride’s family after they failed to pay Rs10,000 negotiated before the wedding on Friday afternoon.

Lodhran tehsil Kahror Paka residents said that the bride’s family beat up wedding guests after they tried to force their way into the house.

When the bride refused to go with the wedding guests the bridegroom and the wedding party waited in a nearby graveyard for over 16 hours. Locals in the village reported the strange sight of seeing scores of people dressed in formal clothes sitting in the Kahror Paka graveyard. “It was a very odd sight. There were several dozen people dressed to the nine sitting near graves and waiting for the bride to arrive,” said resident Alam Sultan

According to locals, Multan resident Muhammad Javed contracted a nikah with Kahror Paka resident Rabia Bibi.

The bride’s family had negotiated that the wedding party would pay the sum of Rs10,000 at the ceremony but Javed and his father Kaleem refused to do so.

Rabia Bibi and her parents Saleem and Asma said that they were affronted when Javed paid them Rs2000. “He wasn’t willing to honour his word and we felt that we should call off the entire thing,” Saleem said.

The families quarreled in the square, where the wedding was being held and Asma took Rabia inside their house. When the groom’s party tried to force their way into the house after the women, several members of Rabia’s family beat the wedding guest with sticks. “It was an extremely odd sight. We saw people dressed in wedding clothes beat each other up with sticks in the middle of the street until the bride’s family threatened to call the police,” said wedding guest Babar Noor.

“We decided to wait and I convinced my parents to go talk to the family,” Javed said. Javed’s grandfather and other tribal elders eventually negotiated with Rabia’s parents and convinced them to send the bride with the wedding party.

“We paid the full sum,” Javed said, adding that the accusation that his family had refused to pay the money was false.

“We simply said we would pay the remaining amount later but everything was blown out of proportion.

Local villagers said that the groom’s party waited for over 16 hours for Rabia to agree to leave with the wedding party. “The negotiations lasted a really long time and all the while the wedding party camped out in the graveyard. The neighbours began to bring them food and some of them napped under the trees,” said Kahror guard Moin.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 17^th, 2011.