A first date turned into a disaster for a 40-year-old college teaching assistant who was arrested here Saturday for being in illegal seclusion (or Khalwa) with an unrelated woman, authorities said. The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, known as the Hai'a, received a report of an unrelated couple inside a mall restaurant and rushed to the scene to investigate, a Hai'a official said. When the Hai'a asked the man about his relationship with the woman, he showed them his family registry card, claiming that the woman was his wife. The Hai'a officers then backed off, but they were not convinced. They kept a close eye on the couple. The academic soon accompanied the woman to a mall gate. Noticing that she was preparing to leave the place on her own, the Hai'a officers stopped him and questioned his relationship with the woman once more. That was when he admitted that she was his girlfriend. The man was taken to the Hai'a office where he admitted that he was on his first date with the woman. He told the Hai'a officials that their relationship started through an Internet messenger service. During the investigation, the man said that he had come all the way to Hail to meet up with woman as a first step toward marriage. The man was then taken to a police station where he was detained. The woman was released.
