Bareilly ''halala'' victim gets death threats

Tribune News Service

Lucknow, July 17

After triple talaq, Muslim women are back in news after the harrowing tale of Bareilly ‘halala’ victim Shabina has come out.

Shabina had been given triple talaq in one sitting by her husband. He then forced her to marry his father, who also gave her triple talaq to facilitate her remarriage to his son.

After some time the son once again divorced Shabina this time forcing her to marry her brother. When the troubled woman decided to put her foot down she was thrown out of the house for her rebellion.

That is when she approached a social worker, Nida Khan, who made her share her traumatic experience of ‘halala’ with the media.

After that Shabina and the Nida have received death threats forcing Shabina to lodge a case with the Bareilly police against five individuals.

Bareilly SP (City) Abhinandan Singh said a case has been registered and orders for investigation have been given.

Halala was originally conceived as a deterrent against divorce.

Islamic law prohibits a husband to remarry his divorced wife till she remarries, consummates her marriage and then gets a divorce from the second husband to remarry her first husband after the mandatory ‘iddat’ period of three months.

“However, as the Shabina case illustrates the practice of ‘halala’ is no longer a deterrent but a form of perversion,” said social activist Noor Zaheer who has written a book against archaic laws in Islam like halala, triple talaq, mut’ah and khula.

Commenting on halala, All India Muslim Personal Law Board Secretary Zafaryab Jilani said the term did not appear anywhere in the Quran but the practice has been mentioned and hence it was not un-Islamic.

Playing down is misuse, Jilani said that a miniscule number of people were perhaps abusing it.

Responding to a question on why AIMPLB did not take the initiative to check the practice, he said that firstly the board has no idea to what extent it was being misused and then the board had no powers to impose penal laws on the guilty.

“If the court asks us to do it we will surely do it,” said Jilani.