New Delhi: In yet another case of instant divorce, a man in Madhya Pradesh was arrested on Thursday for saying ‘triple talaq’ to his wife, for being obese.
The wife, Salma Bano, has alleged that her husband and mother-in-law used to taunt her for being fat.
“My husband would constantly make fun of me about my weight. He and his mother would nag me on my physical condition. My husband mistreated me for being obese,” Bano said in her complaint to the police.
The complainant married Arif Hussain 10 years ago and they have two children.
“Soon after our wedding, my husband started harassing me and calling me fat. As the torture did not end, I decided to move back to my parents’ house in Meghnagar. But my husband would beat me up. After he divorced me by uttering ‘talaq’ thrice, I decided it was enough,” Bano told Gulf News.
The case was registered under the new Protection of Rights of Marriage of Muslim Women Ordinance, 2018, against Hussain and his mother Hussain Bano at Meghnagar police station in Jhabua district.
“After giving me triple talaq, my husband tried to take my children away and when I refused, he threatened to kill me,” Bano added.
According to Meghnagar police station-in-charge Kushal Singh Rawat, Hussain was immediately arrested after the victim registered a formal complaint.
This comes a month after the government passed an ordinance making triple talaq a punishable offence.
Triple Talaq or instant divorce is a form of Islamic divorce which has been used by Muslims in India, especially adherents of the Hanafi Sunni Islamic schools of jurisprudence. It allows any Muslim man to legally divorce his wife by stating the word ‘talaq’ three times in oral, written, or more recently, electronic form.
Unconstitutional
On August 22, 2017, the Supreme Court of India deemed instant ‘triple talaq’ unconstitutional. Later, the Narendra Modi-government formulated a bill called ‘the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, 2017’ and introduced it in Parliament; it was passed on December 28, 2017 by the Lok Sabha (Lower House of Parliament).
The Bill made instant triple talaq in any form — spoken, in writing or by electronic means such as email, SMS and WhatsApp — illegal and void, with up to three years in jail for the husband.
However, the Bill was stalled in Rajya Sabha (Upper House of Parliament) where the government did not have a majority. Thus, the government passed an ordinance last month making triple talaq a criminal offence.
