[Strawberry_Blonde]

mmmm! Anyone got Malkers' Tel Number Handy?! ha ha ha!

KOLKATA, India (Reuters) - An Indian Muslim couple exchanged wedding vows by telephone after the groom, who lives abroad, said he did not have money to return home to get married, a cleric said on Friday.

Muslim clerics married Irin Biswas, 18, to Safikul Islam, who is employed as a labour supervisor in Kuwait.

The entire village in Murshidabad, West Bengal, watched as the clerics put a mobile phone on speaker mode, enabling them to hear the wedding vows.

"They said qubul (I do) thrice and the marriage was complete," Maulana Alamgir, a cleric who solemnised the marriage said by telephone. He said modern ceremony was not against Islamic laws.

The bride, in endless interviews to the local media, said she had seen Safikul only once, when he was home for holidays.

"I have never spoken to him but now I speak to him daily," Irin told reporters.

Safikul is due to meet his wife for the first time in October this year when he eventually comes home for holidays, family members said.

(Reporting by Sujoy Dhar; Editing by Bappa Majumdar)