A BOGUS bride has been jailed for marrying men to allow them to gain entry to the UK.

Sonal Soyantar was a fake bride in three separate wedding ceremonies involving Indian men.

Soyantar, aged 35, of Gregson Field, Daubhill, Bolton, was sentenced yesterday to 16 months in prison after admitting three bigamist marriages to help others obtain British citizenship.

Rachael Woods, prosecuting, told Preston Crown Court that Soyantar, also from India, had been married a total of five times, the first two marriages being legitimate.

Her second legitimate marriage was in September, 2004, but two months later she took part in a further wedding ceremony in India to a man called Arif Bashir Patel, during which she claimed her uncle had arranged the marriage.

The following July, she married Mahmad Sajid Patel, who claimed to be living in the Whalley Range area of Blackburn, and during the ceremony at Blackburn Register Office she declared her previous marriage had been dissolved.

On July 29, 2005 she took part in a Muslim ceremony to wed Saleem Sedat which was performed in a house and conducted by a priest.

Shortly afterwards, suspicions were raised and inquiries by the Home Office led to police raiding her home on February 17 this year.

Police discovered she was hiding a carrier bag under her duvet which contained a number of passports under different names and other false documents.

Mark Stuart, defending, claimed a man, described as "Mr Big", met her and exploited her while she was living alone in Bolton following the breakdown of her first marriage.

Judge Anthony Russell QC told Soyantar it had been a "flagrant abuse of the system".

He added: "Had you wanted to escape from the situation you could have gone to the authorities. These offences are so serious that the only proper sentence is one if imprisonment. It's because of this sort of offence that public confidence in the immigration system is undermined."

The court was told that Soyantar applied to the High Commission in Mumbai in 1999 to legitimately marry a man called Sonal Chetan Narsih who was already living in the UK.

She became a victim of domestic violence, their marriage ended in divorce and she was forced to seek refuge at a women's centre in Bolton.

The court was told at around the same time Ilyas Yakub Haji applied to the High Commission in Mumbai to enter the UK as a holiday maker.

The application was refused but granted four years later and on September 24, 2004, the pair legitimately married in Blackburn.

Mr Stuart said: "She is a woman of good character who came to this country legitimately in expectation of a reasonable and prosperous marriage.

"Unfortunately she ended up in a women's refuge, alone and vulnerableSpeaking after Soyantar had been sentenced, Det Con Tariq Javed, of Blackburn's Community Cohesion Team, said: "The people involved in this are making big sums of money. They are charging between £10,000 and £15,000 for a bogus marriage to obtain citizenship in the UK.

"This result sends out a strong message that we do take this kind of offence extremely seriously."