Rubina Ali’s Father Tried To Sell Her

Well, here’s a truly fucked up and sad story for a Sunday. The News of the World (I know, I know) claims that 9-year-old Rubina Ali, one of the stars of Slumdog Millionaire, has been put on the auction block by her daddy Rafiq Qureshi. OctoMommy, don’t get any ideas…..

The News of the World got all Dateline NBC on Rafiq and sent an undercover reporter to pretend to be a sheik (Why am I picturing Ann Curry as the sheik?) interested in buying Rubina for around £270,000. They did this after finding out a deal between Rafiq and a family in Dubai to buy Rubina fell through.

Rafiq told the fake sheik that he has no choice but to sell his daughter, because the producers of Slumdog never made good on their promise to buy the family a house and get them out of the slums. Rafiq told the fake sheik, “They haven’t looked after us. They gave some money at the start but they gave us nothing afterwards. They gave us around 150,000 rupees (£2,040). They’ve been talking about giving us a house, but all they do is talk. What they showed in the film is exactly how life is here. The government doesn’t help us. We get nothing. We live in one room, seven of us sleep on the floor. I earn £2 to £3 a day. I have to consider what’s best for me, my family and Rubina’s future. We haven’t got anything yet, it’s all supposed to come later!”

Danny Boyle and the producers of Slumdog have already said that they set up a trust fund for the kids to pay for their education and housing. In addition to that, a sound engineer who worked on the film bought each of the kids an apartment in South India. But Rubina’s daddy still claims they haven’t seen shit.

After finding out about this fuckery, Rubina’s mother showed up to Rafiq’s house this morning and demanded that her daughter be removed. Rafiq denies trying to sell his daughter, but his second wife said a foreign woman offered to buy Rubina and they turned her down. This led to Rubina’s mother and her stepmother punching and choking each other out in front of the house!!

Save the Children was quick to respond and asked India to sign up to to the International Labor Organization’s convention to help stop the selling of children to the highest bidder.

And somewhere in the world, Angie Jolie is raising her hand and asking, “Does he accept PayPal?”

Sources: News of the World, Daily Mail, Times Online