Jaitley highlights plight of Bareilly’s triple talaq victim

LUCKNOW: Union minister Arun Jaitley has highlighted the plight of a woman from Bareilly who was allegedly raped by her fatherin-law on the pretext of halala.

“A recent case from Bareilly has shocked my conscience. It relates to the obnoxious practice of Nikah-halala in Islamic personal law,” Jaitley wrote in his blog post on Friday which he also shared on his Facebook and Twitter accounts.

“A lady who is married in 2009 was twice divorced by her husband through triple talaq, once in 2011 and subsequently in 2017,” he said. The tweet was shared by over 3,400 users and drew several comments.

The victim, a 32-year-old woman from Bareilly, had lodged a report in July last year accusing her father-in-law of raping her.

According to the report lodged by the woman, she was married in 2009 but was given triple talaq by her husband in 2011.

She told the police that later in the year, the man agreed to marry her again but on the condition of

performing halala with her father-in-law.

Nikah halala is practiced by certain sects of Sunni Muslims. It involves a female divorcee marrying someone else, consummating the marriage and then getting a divorce to remarry her previous husband.

The woman said six years after halala and remarriage, her husband divorced her again in 2017.

She claimed that a few months after the divorce, her husband told her that he would marry her again if she performed halala with his brother which she refused. Besides charging her father-in-law with rape (Section 376 of the IPC), she accused her husband of committing unnatural intercourse and charged five of his in-laws with criminal conspiracy (Section 120 B).