By Umar Khurshid

SRINAGAR: It was a tragedy that usually is a novel or a film. A bride happily walked out of her father’s home with her husband and the car started taking the just-wedded couple home. Women were singing in their praise and the bride, all of a sudden, had a cardiac arrest. She was driven to the hospital and was declared brought dead, in her bridal dress.

Moments Afters Nikkah, A Bride Walks With Husband To Death

The celebrations turned into mourning and the women who were singing in her praise started beating their chest in pain. The village wept as the young groom cried like a child. The night she was supposed to step inside her home for life, she was lowered in her grave.

This is what exactly happened in a Qazigund village on Monday.

Delayed reports from the area identified the bride as Rafiqa Banoo, daughter of Rajwali Dedad of Waltangoo Nar, near Kund. It is the same belt that has destroyed the village when a snowstorm devoured the village with homes and humans in February 2005.

Mohammad Rafi, a resident of the village told this reporter that celebrations were going on the relatives had taken the bride to the car and were busy bidding her adieu that she collapsed. The car, in which her husband was already seated, had started to leave for her in-laws home in Pachgaam-nard Kund, Qazigund.

Rafiqa had married Manzoor Ahmed, a farmer. It was an arranged marriage. The dates for the marriage were scheduled much earlier. It was the day of the Vidayee. Before that, there were celebrations on the wedding night. It was the same day – hours before the baraat came, that the nikkah ceremony took place.

But the ceremony had to follow a different script. As the couple walked after the sumptuous dinner to their home, she collapsed. Her relatives around immediately took her to the Primary health Centre Razaloo where they referred her to the Emergency Hospital Qazigund. She was declared brought dead, there.

Rafi said that after the incident triggered commotion in the belt, a police party from police station Kund came to the hospital and took cognizance of the incident. Later, they handed over Rafiqa’s body to the family.

“The tragedy struck the village around Eisha prayers,” Rafi said. “Many hours later, they gave us her body and at around 11:30, we offered funeral prayers and she was then laid to rest at the family’s ancestral graveyard in Waltangoo.” It was a funeral prayer in which most of the participants were almost crying.

The bride and the groom belong to the Gujjar family. Both the families have marginal farming as their principal profession.

The bride Rafiqaa Banoo, is the stepdaughter of Rajwali Dedad, as her father died before a decade. She is survived by her four siblings’, father and a mother.

Meanwhile, SHO Kund, Zulfikar Ali said that the bride died of a natural death after she collapsed while leaving with the groom on Monday evening.

“After both, the families got the permission from the Deputy Commissioner, the body was given to the family on the same night.”

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here