KARACHI, Dec 15: Although Nikah over the telephone has become very common, but for the first time in Pakistan a Nikah was performed on the internet through a video-conference at a studio of an internet service provider (ISP), where the bride attended the ceremony and the groom participated in it sitting in Virginia, USA, on Saturday evening.

Mehwish Hassan, a student of computer science at the Bahria University, Karachi, and Rashid Ashraf, working as an IT consultant in Virginia, tied the knot through a video-conference in which Qari Syed Mohammad Ali performed the Nikah.

“Although they were relatives, the couple knew each other through internet chatting and later both the families decided about the marriage,” said Ansarul Haq of the ISP — Cyber.Net.

Talking to newsmen, he said the bridegroom visited Pakistan in October and met his would-be-bride and her family to finalize the proposal.

The video-conference Nikah ceremony was attended by relatives of both the families and they congratulated the bridegroom who was sitting in his home before a “web-cam” of his computer, attached through the internet.

An Indian citizen, Rashid Ashraf has been living in the USA for a couple of years and his relatives, including an aunt, live in Pakistan. Some relatives and friends of the bridegroom also attended the ceremony in the US.

The Rukhsati ceremony would be held in February when the bridegroom would visit Pakistan.

In a brief chat with newsmen, Rashid said that the main purpose of holding the distant Nikah was that he wanted to complete the documentation process of his bride before coming to Pakistan for the Rukhsati.

He said it took at least one month for completion of the documentation and he did not want to visit the country twice — first for Nikah and then for Rukhsati.

He said the advancement of technology has provided people with the facility and there remained no geographical barriers.

Ansarul Haq said the families had decided to hold the ceremony on the telephone but when they were offered the video-conferencing facility, they chose to use the new medium which is not only effective but also very reliable.

Video-conferencing is a quite new idea in Pakistan although it has become very popular in the US and Europe.

“It requires a high bandwidth and the latest equipment, including high-tech cameras and audio systems,” he said, adding that the service had been introduced in various cities, including Karachi, Lahore, Islamabad, Faisalabad and Peshawar.

He said at present video-conference is quite costly because of the high cost of bandwidth and expensive camera equipment. An hour’s video-conferencing, he added, may cost between US$,1,500 and $2,000, which may come down to Rs35,000 by June.

There are many uses of this latest technology which include tele-medicine clinics, he said, adding that the ISP was planning to set up a tele-medicine clinic in Karachi and other major cities, where a patient who visits abroad to have a second opinion can contact the same doctor for his opinion by sitting in Pakistan.—APP