PESHAWAR (AFP) - A court on Tuesday remanded in custody a portly fertiliser dealer and teenage eunuch for allegedly trying to marry in Peshawar, police said. The alleged couple and dozens of guests were arrested when police raided a late-night party after a tip off that 42-year-old Malik Mohammad Iqbal Khan was trying to marry a 19-year-old eunuch, police said. We arrested the bridegroom, the would-be bride and 41 others at the wedding party, local police station chief Shahid Khan told AFP in the working class neighbourhood of Faqir Abad in the northwestern city. All of them were remanded in custody for one day on charges of attending an event that is against Sharia law and illegal, police said. The fertiliser dealer, who already has two wives, denied he was marrying the eunuch - it had only been a birthday party for Rani. We were having a birthday party, but police arrested us. We had no intention of getting married, he told AFP at the police station. The furious 'bride also insisted it had only been a birthday bash. I pray there should be more suicide attacks on police because they put people in trouble unnecessarily, said Rani, who gave only one name. Shah Faisal, a senior lawyer in Peshawar, said that police brought up the charge of unnatural sexual offence against the accused for which the maximum punishment was life imprisonment. Police showed an AFP reporter a room in the neighbourhood that had been strung with lights and decked out in a style befitting newly wed couples. Police pointed to Ranis palms, which were covered in henna - a traditional rite of passage for brides but also performed for other special occasions. Ranis family was paid 300,000 rupees by Khan and another 80,000 rupees to pay off a debt owed by Rani, Shahid Khan said. The eunuch community, which includes hermaphrodites, transsexuals, transvestites and homosexuals, is mocked, pitied and shunned by society. They frequently beg on the streets and many end up as prostitutes. In a move toward granting the countrys estimated 500,000 eunuchs rights, Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has ordered the government to recognise them as a distinct gender - although how it will be implemented remains to be seen.