Seyed Abdolkarim, a 55-year-old man, has been arrested after he allegedly wed a girl who was just six years old, in return for a goat.
Abdolkarim was taken in by officers after police were told he had married the child, Gharibgol, in a religious ceremony.
The child was reportedly sold by her father, was beaten and slapped by local women when police came to arrest him, and also claimed he exchanged her for the goat, along with rice, tea, sugar, and cooking oil.
He said he had been struggling to look after the family, and that exchanging his daughter meant he gained food and lost a mouth to feed, adding that Abdolkarim had promised he would not sleep with Gharibgol until she was 18.
Following the marriage, the respected imam, Abdolkarim, was said to have taken his new wife to a relative’s house in Firozkoh, in Ghor province, as his daughter.
But they became concerned when they realised “he was undressing her at night,” according to reports.
Mr Ahmady writes: “So he(the relative) asked the mullah, ‘she’s not your daughter?’
“The mullah replied, ‘no, she’s my wife; her father gave her to me’. The host told a friend, who called the local women rights bureau for Ghor province.”
Tests carried out by the hospital in Ghor show that “there was no sexual intercourse”.
The child is currently being housed in a safe location with her mother.
The province’s women’s rights bureau intends to ensure a divorce and the removal of the father’s parental rights, but it will be a complex process as another imam must carry out the divorce – which is frowned upon in the culture.
The arrangement has gone viral in Afghanistan where the law states that women are permitted to wed from 16 and men from 18 – but influential imams can escape punishment, according to Mr Ahmady.
A UN survey released five years ago revealed that 46.4% of Afghanistan marriages occurred before the females turned 18, a figure which is taken as an under-reported estimate.
Last year, a 19-year-old was stoned to death after she was said to have fled with her 23-year-old fiancé to get married against their parents’ wishes.
