A husband and wife from the East Midlands region of England have been convicted of child marriage offences after arranging to take their two teenage sons to Pakistan for nikah.

The UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said the British Pakistani couple from Nottingham, who cannot be named to protect the identities of the underage victims, took the boys to Pakistan when they were 17, "with the specific purpose of finding them someone to marry".

They were handed a two-month suspended sentence and 100 hours of unpaid community work at Nottingham Crown Court on Friday.

“Child marriage laws are in place to protect children from the harm done by entering a lifelong commitment at such an early age," said Emma Cornell, a senior prosecutor at the CPS East Midlands complex casework unit.

“These defendants disregarded that protection by taking the boys to Pakistan to be married. The law applies wherever the offending takes place and, on their return, these two defendants were rightly held to account,” she said.

The couple’s two-month sentence is suspended for 12 months, which means they escape an immediate custodial term behind bars, provided they commit no further offences and comply with specific conditions set by the judge.

The court heard that one of the boys refused a proposed match, but another was married in a nikah ceremony to a local girl. Police were alerted to the marriage following a referral from the young person’s educational institution.

Their parents initially denied that they had been seeking marriages, but pleaded guilty to carrying out conduct to cause a child under 18 to enter a marriage on February 17.

The laws increasing the minimum age for marriage to 18 in England and Wales came into force in 2023, when the child marriage offence was introduced. The couple claimed they were not aware of this legislation.

“The defendants initially claimed that the visit had been a holiday or family visit. They asserted that the idea of marrying had come from one of the boys, and that they had gone along with his wishes. Analysis of their phones showed that this was not true," the CPS said. Investigators discovered several messages on the father’s phone referring to looking for a rishta, or marriage proposal, for his sons. He also said in messages to others that he was in Pakistan trying to find his son a wife.

The mother’s phone showed detailed conversations about arrangements she was making with another family, including contingency plans for when the boy announced he did not like the match they had secured for him.

Her phone also contained video footage of a wedding ceremony and showed her exchanging money with the bride's family.  “The wedding took place in the form of a nikah ceremony. While this required to be done in a registered premises to be a legal marriage for UK purposes, the ceremony is binding under Islamic and Pakistani law,” the CPS said.

The UK prosecutors secured independent advice from an expert in Islamic marriage matters, who confirmed the legal status of the marriage and clarified the significance of the traditional ceremony – including the social and legal constraints it put upon the victims.

This expert also provided evidence to confirm to the court that the photographs showed a nikah ceremony had taken place.

During the sentencing hearing this week, the CPS made it clear that, although the couple had acted unlawfully, there was no force or undue coercion involved. The prosecution also accepted their assertion that they had not been aware of the change in law.

“However, in taking their children overseas to arrange marriages for them, they had broken this law and ignorance of the law is not a defence," the CPS stated.