A Bradford couple were jailed on Friday for drugging their daughter and trying to fly her to Pakistan for an arranged marriage. Crime Reporter Ashley Broadley looks at the issues and problems Asian parents and their children face in a multicultural society.

Mohammed Bashir admitted his guilt in kidnapping and drugging his daughter in an effort to get her back to Pakistan for an arranged marriage.

But the case of how the Bradford shopkeeper drugged daughter Rehane, 20, is not just a case of kidnapping.

In fact police in Bradford deal with some 200 cases a year where young Asian girls leave home, largely because of the pressures of arranged marriages.

Last week, Bashir, 45, was jailed for two years and his wife Sekina Kahn, 40, for six months. They have not seen their daughter, who woke up drugged at Manchester Airport and screamed for help, since the incident.

Rehane, who had left the family's newsagents shop in Northside Road, Lidget Green, to study at Luton University, is not the first Asian woman to suffer abuse in Bradford as she battled against her parents' cultural ideals.

Inspector Martin Baines is the Community and Race Relations Officer for Bradford. He works closely with the Bradford Racial Equality Council.

Its director, Ishtiaq Ahmed, is keen to open the debate about Asian families living in Western society. "In a proper arranged marriage there is a lot of discussion that takes place between the two families concerned," he said.

"There are opportunities for young men and women to get to know each other - and usually within the Pakistani community the marriage takes place with the extended family.

"Problems can arise when a member of the family in Bradford is selected to marry another member of the family in Pakistan. They will have never met.

"Ideally there should be debate and discussion. There has got to be consent between the two people."

According to the Bradford Commission Report into the Bradford Riots of June, 1995, between 500 and 600 marriages a year in Bradford are "international" - between an Asian born in Bradford and a spouse from the Indian sub-continent.

"You have got to remember that many parents in Bradford came here during the 1950s and 60s," said Ishtiaq.

"They still think about how society was in their homeland then. But society in Pakistan has progressed in many ways. Youngsters in Pakistan are much more outgoing and have a more open lifestyle.''

Insp Baines added: "The number of Asian girls and women leaving home is increasing.

"These women often leave home to either avoid an arranged marriage, because of domestic violence, because they are involved in relationships their families do not approve of, or through personal choice.

"We treat such cases in a very sensitive manner and we are not in the business of dividing families. In many cases, the families are reconciled."

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