The obvious question: How many like Sania Bibi have not yet been discovered in the U.K. and other Western countries?
“Muslim bride ‘beaten every day by husband and mother-in-law’ after being flown from Pakistan for arranged marriage,” by Andrew Levy for the Daily Mail, August 5:
A young Muslim bride was constantly beaten and treated like a slave after arriving in Britain from Pakistan following an arranged marriage, a court heard.
Sania Bibi, 20, was allegedly forced to work 17-hour days as she cooked, cleaned and washed clothes for her husband Haroon Akhtar’s family.
She was usually attacked at least twice a day by her husband, who threw her down the stairs on one occasion after his mother complained she had not been doing her chores properly, the jury heard.
Within days of his wife’s arrival in the UK Akhtar, 28, is said to have told her that he planned to remarry and would force her to look after his new bride’s children.
Giving evidence from behind a screen and using an interpreter, Mrs Bibi – who said she came from a middle-class family – said her gruelling days lasted from 6am to 11pm.
‘I was told I had been brought here as a servant and I was told I had to do all the work,’ she said.
St Albans Crown Court heard Mrs Bibi had not seen her husband in person before their wedding in northern Punjab on April 1, 2006.
Akhtar allegedly returned to the UK two weeks later without having consummated the marriage and his mother Zafia Bibi, 49, and father Ali Akhtar, 55, followed, taking jewellery their daughter-in-law had been given at the wedding.
Mrs Bibi – who claimed not to have seen the jewellery since – travelled to Britain on September 7, 2006, and went to live with them in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.
But she said on her arrival she discovered her husband’s two brothers, older sister and her three young children were also living in the house.
Her clothes and shoes were confiscated and she was given pyjamas as work clothes.
She was allowed to change into normal clothes only when guests came. She also claimed she was never allowed to have money and was banned from answering the door or using the phone.
Mrs Bibi told the court on Monday that she and her husband had sex for the first three days following her arrival.
But this stopped suddenly and she was moved into a box room where she slept on a sofa.
Within days, she alleged, she had been put to work for the entire family. […]
Once, Zafia Bibi allegedly became angry that the housework had not been done properly and called her son, who attacked his wife in the bathroom before throwing her down the stairs.
Mrs Bibi said she confided in relatives during a visit to Blackburn, but they told her: ‘Now that you are married you have to stay there and it is family honour. You belong to that family. You no longer belong to us.’
On her return, the court heard, one brother-in-law threatened to send her back to Pakistan and her sister-in-law said she was going to be sent to a mental asylum, where she would be given electric shocks.
She was finally expelled from the house early in 2007, collected by taxi and driven to her relatives’ home….