A British teenager has been rescued from a forced marriage to her Bangladeshi cousin after begging diplomats to help her.

Nasrin Begum, 19, travelled from the UK with her mother to Sylhet, in northeastern Bangladesh, where she was to marry the son of her mother's uncle, Mohidur Rahman Khan, local police chief said.

However, hours before she was due to take part in the wedding, Nasrin telephoned the British consular office in Sylhet and begged staff to intervene, telling them she did not want to marry the man.

"The embassy officials came to the village with police and rescued the girl from a marriage that she did not want,'' he said.

Nasrin, who was born in the UK, was later handed back to her mother, Asma Begum, after assurances that she would not be forced into the marriage, said Ataur Rahman, the local government chief.

A spokesman for the British High Commission in Dhaka said staff assisted in 56 forced marriage cases between April 2007 and March 2008.

"We think there are more out there,'' he said, refusing to comment on the Begum case, which comes a day after the British Government tightened visa rules as part of a crackdown on forced marriages.

Under the measures, which will be implemented by the end of the year, teenage foreign brides and bridgrooms will be barred from entering Britain on marriage visas. The minimum age at which British citizens can sponsor a foreigner to enter the country as a spouse is to rise from 18 to 21, as is the minimum age at which a bride or groom can themselves enter on a marriage visa.

The measures follow increasing concern at the extent of forced marriages in the UK and at the abuse of the marriage visa route by people who would otherwise find it difficult to enter the country.

Jacqui Smith, the Home Secretary, said: "Forced marriage leads to victims suffering years of physical and mental abuse and in extreme cases unlawful imprisonment and rape. It has no place in our society. "

A total of 47,000 people entered Britain in 2006 as a spouse or fiance(e), more than double the number a decade earlier. The measures will hit hardest 17,000 spouses and fiance(e)s from the sub-continent.

Figures show that 5,140 people under 21 entered the country as a spouse or fiance(e) in 2005, including 35 aged 16 and 60 aged 17.

The forced marriage unit at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office deals with about 5,000 calls a year and an estimated 400 cases of forced marriage. But these figures are thought to underestimate the scale of the problem. Nearly a third of cases dealt with by the unit involved people aged between 18 and 21.

The majority of cases involve families from Pakistan, Bangladesh or India, where arranged marriages are considered part of the culture, with some victims from Africa, South America and Europe.

There are around half a million British nationals of Bangladeshi origin, many from Sylhet and its adjoining districts.

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