It has been merely ten months since Mumtaz Mogal has been married off to Salim Mogal, a shepherd in Bhadreshwar village. The 16-year-old girl from Bankura district of West Bengal is already seven months pregnant and trying to cope with the new culture and language.

Like Mumtaz, Masura, Samina, Ruksana and many other Bengali girls like her from the Indo-Bangla border areas are now finding their way here as brides. "Our father was too poor to arrange for our marriage back home," said Ruksana Adam, who claims to be from Bankura district in West Bengal. "It was at that point, a man called Zafar from our area met our father and got me married here," Ruksana added. Married for four years, this woman in her early twenties now has a daughter. Her sister Afsana, who is in her teens too found her way to Kutch a couple of years back and has a son.

"A lot of girls are being brought in here as well as in the Banni region," said Meena Rajgore from the Kutch Mahila Vikas Sangathan. "While they claim to hail from Kolkata, many of them are from Bangladesh too," she added. "In many communities here there is a tradition of early engagement, the ones who do not find a bride early are often forced to stay without a wife till very late. Mostly such people procure wives from Kolkata or Bangladesh," she said, adding that many widower Muslims of the region too procured their second or third wife through agents.

Neerav Patni from the District Rural Development Agency in Bhuj too confirmed this practice of getting brides from West Bengal and other areas along the Indo-Bangla border areas. "The Maldhari communities in Banni area get girls from West Bengal. The practice gained momentum with the communities trying to reap the benefits of various government schemes through higher number of family members. However, to differentiate between a girl from West Bengal and one from Bangladesh is a very difficult task," said Patni.

In Bhadreshwar, an agent called Zafar has been in the business of getting girls from West Bengal and Bangladesh for about a decade. "I know that this man has been getting girls from Bengal, but I could not meet him in spite of a lot of efforts," said Ibrahim Sale Majaliya, a leader from the fishing community in the village. "He speaks many languages, Bengali, Gujarati, Kutchi and Marathi," said Ruksana, who further pointed out that Zafar periodically visits West Bengal to procure girls from the poor families. According to villagers, Zafar brings girls from 'Kolkata' for the eligible bachelors in lieu of money. The girls met by this reporter also testified the 'Zafar connection' to their relocation.

"We paid about Rs 40,000 for getting our-sister-in law, Madina," said Ishaq Juma Kumbhar, a villager from Bhadreshwar. The earlier three wives of his brother Ramjo Siddique Kumbhar had eloped, and Samima, who claims to be from Niyamatpur in Asansol has been living with him for the last six months.

Another sister in-law, Samima who is also from the same area got three of her sisters married off in nearby villages. "I came to Bhadreshwar five years back, now three of my sisters too are married here," she said.

When this reporter met the girls, barring one (Mumtaz Mogal), the rest of them betrayed east Bengali accent in their diction, while talking. "Yes they get girls from all over, Asansol, Ramnathpur, Khulna," said 25-year-old Razia, who feigns to have forgotten her mother-tongue. Now married to Ari Ahmed Suranji in Bhadreshwar, who works in Dubai, Razia was earlier married to a man in Bhuj and has two daughters from him.

According to Fakir Muhammad Qureshi, brother-in-law of Masura Qureshi, who has been married for the last seven years and claims to be from Bankura, the practice is economical for both parties and the girls too are settled happily here. They are cared for and feel assured," said Qureshi. "So at times even the elder sister who gets married here gets her younger siblings married off in the nearby villages," he said, adding that many of the girls also visit their homes once in a while. "A conservative estimate would put the number of such girls from Bengal to anywhere between 750 to 800 if not more," he added.

Kutch Police superintendent Harekrishna Patel said with gender disparity very high in Kutch, many communities buy their wives from outside. "We know many Bengali girls are being brought in here, but as yet we have no official information on girls from Bangladesh being brought in. There are agents, who are operating between this part and West Bengal to traffic girls," he said, adding that the possibility of Bangladeshi girls being sold in Kutch cannot be ruled out altogether.