VIENNA: Two couples looking to get married have left an Austrian registry office wearing handcuffs instead of rings after they are accused of bogus marriage.

One of the suspects is a Nepali man.

State broadcaster ORF reports that the registrar in the town of Moedling, south of Vienna, became suspicious because neither of the pairs - a Romanian woman with a Nepali man and a Hungarian woman with a Tunisian man - could understand each other.

Police determined that the four were seeking bogus marriages that would have given the men a better chance of settling in the EU through wives who come from EU-member nations.

ORF said Wednesday that one of the men was sought by police, but gave no details. None of the four was identified in keeping with Austrian privacy laws.