Islamic clerics and respected elders of the Russian republic of Ingushetia agreed to hike unofficial fines for bride kidnapping in a bid to stop the custom that often leads to a bloody violence.

      Stealing a woman to take her as wife will now cost the groom 200,000 rubles ($6,100), up from 10,000 rubles ($305), participants decreed at the ongoing Islamic Conference in the republican capital Magas.

      Groom’s helpers, village elders who take part in the kidnapping and the owner of the house that hosts the kidnapped woman would pay up 100,000 rubles each, a spokesman for the republican government said Saturday.

      The fines are unofficial, but the decisions of clerics and elders have much weight in the predominantly Islamic and traditionalist southern republic. It is important to stress that kidnapping is already considered an action penal according to the Russian legislation, which foresees a real prison sentence for it.

      Though the kidnapping is not always forcible and sometimes happens with the concurrence of a bride and her relatives, there are still many violent incidents linked to that tradition. In October 2013, three people, including a pregnant passer-by, were slain in a street fight between two Ingush clans that followed a bride kidnapping.

      Ingushetia follows the example of its neighboring Chechen republic, which set up a fine of 1 million rubles ($30,500) for bride kidnapping in 2010. However, the republican strongman leader Ramzan Kadyrov later admitted it failed to stop the custom.