The father agreed to sell his six-year-old daughter Gharibgol to the 55-year-old imam, Seyed Abdolkarim, which runs counter the law in Afghanistan, which allows girls to marry from the age of 16 and boys from 18, according to France 24.
The footage was taken by local journalist Fawad Ahmady for France 24.
After the ceremony, the imam reportedly took his six-year-old wife to his relative’s house in Firozkoh, in Ghor province, without specifying their status. Thus the house owner at first thought that it was his daughter. However, some time later he noticed that Abdolkarim was undressing the girl before they slept.
A local women rights bureau for Ghor province was later notified.
Tests carried out at a local hospital at a hospital proved that the imam didn’t touch the girl, who is now in a safe place with her mother.
The bureau is planning to arrange a divorce and strip the father of his parental rights.
In 2010 a survey conducted by the Afghanistan Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (AMICS) showed that 46.4 percent of marriages in Afghanistan involve women under eighteen while 15.2 percent of surveyed women were married before the age of 15.
