Sham wedding is stopped by police because Hungarian bride and Pakistani groom could not understand each other

A sham wedding ceremony was broken up by police after they discovered that the bride and groom were unable to understand what each other were saying.

Sufyan Shahzad, from Pakistan, claimed to have had a whirlwind romance with Hungarian woman Katalin Ottlyk.

But when officials noticed that the couple could not communicate properly, they became suspicious and alerted police to the fraud.

Officers waited until the day of the ceremony on July 27, before swooping to arrest the bride and groom, as well as a woman alleged to have arranged the sham marriage.

It emerged that Shahzad, 25, had paid 30-year-old Ottlyk £1,500 in order to stay in the country after his student visa expired a year ago when he was living in Manchester.

The pair both pleaded guilty to the fraud at Bolton Crown Court on Friday.

The court heard that the Blackburn registrar reported the couple to police after noticing that they 'did not interact with each other or speak the same language'.

When Shahzad was interviewed by officers after his arrest, he insisted the relationship was genuine, but was unable to give police any personal information about his fiancee, such as where in Hungary she was from.

Ottlyk later admitted that the marriage was a sham and that she had been paid to take part.

Her barrister, Kimberley Morton, said: 'She was very frank in her interview and accepts her guilt. She originally felt sorry for Mr Shahzad but she also received financial reward - but this was a one-off incident and not a sophisticated one.'

When the couple appeared in court, their English was so poor that both of them required proceedings to be translated into their native language.

Judge Timothy Stead sentenced the pair to 20 months in prison each, with an additional four months for Ottlyk for using an fake ID card which had been stolen from another Hungarian woman.

He said: 'You had no intention of being married to each other, it was done entirely so that you, Mr Shahzad could gain a permanent extension of your right to remain in the UK.

'Katalin Ottlyk acted in the course of this conspiracy for money - it is as simple as that.

'Bogus marriages are an abuse of the institution of marriage and an abuse of UK immigration law.'

Another woman, Maria Baloggojkovitsne, was due to stand trial for allegedly setting up the sham marriage, but fled the country before her trial and is now wanted by police.