On Thursday, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad introduced the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill 2017, which criminalises the instant triple talaq practice. Even though this bill seeks to emancipate the Muslim women from being exploited by their husbands, it was met with resistance by AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi who claimed that the bill violated fundamental rights and lacked legal coherence.
Earlier in the day, Congress leader Salman Khurshid had created a sob story in order to defend the practice of triple talaq, and was ridiculed as a result.
But while opposition politicians are bickering over the bill and practice itself, Muslim women continue to suffer at the hands of this draconian practice.
It has been reported that a man has given triple talaq to his wife, simply because she overslept and got up late in the morning. The girl named Gul Afsha was later thrown out of the house. This incident has been reported from the Nagaliya Aqil village in Uttar Pradesh’s Rampur district.
As per local reports, her husband first slapped her on the cheek and then gave her triple talaq following which he threw her out of her home and locked their house. She then as per the report, she went to the police station but her community members took her away by explaining that being a domestic matter it will be settled between the two parties.
The police station in charge, when asked about this matter claimed that Afsha had indeed come to the station to inform about the matter, but she didn’t want to file any case.
Afsha’s barely four months old marriage with Qasim, a truck driver, soured within months after he started assaulting her. Turns out that the husband and wife had a heated row on Monday night and Qasim proceeded to brutally beat her.
As a result of this beating, Afsha couldn’t properly sleep at night, and woke up late on Tuesday morning. This too angered Qasim, who then proceeded to give her triple talaq.
The girl as a result of this torture, has now taken refuge in her parent’s home. Her family members are in a state of shock due to the matter, and even Afsha continues to be very stressed.
Even though the practice of triple talaq has been outlawed by the Supreme Court, it hasn’t stopped Muslim men from giving instant talaq to their wives, over the most frivolous of reasons.
We had reported how a husband had given triple talaq to his wife after she tried to stop him from forcibly selling her land. In another case, a husband was accused of assaulting and giving triple talaq to his wife after she took food for her relative in hospital.
In one of the cases the local police had expressed a lack of knowledge regarding the course of action in such matters, as he claimed that they hadn’t yet received any instructions as to how they should proceed with the investigation.
This issue might be fixed the moment there’s a concrete law which criminalises the Islamic practice, thereby providing a clear road map for the law authorities to act in these matters.
