More than three months after her husband purportedly divorced her through a letter sent by Speed Post, a 25-year-old Muslim woman from Jaipur has moved the Supreme Court seeking reform of the Muslim Personal Law and an end to the system of “frivolous triple-talaq”.
The court admitted her petition last week and has issued notices to her husband.
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Their match fixed through wedding portal Shaadi.com, petitioner Afreen Rehman had married Syed Ashhar Ali Warsi, a resident of Indore, in August 2014. The first few months went off blissfully, after which, Afreen alleged, her husband and in-laws began troubling her for dowry. It began with mental harassment, before Syed Asghar began physically assaulting her, Afreen, an MBA, alleged.
Last September, after her in-laws drove her out of their house, she returned to Jaipur to stay with her mother. Afreen said she last saw her husband at her mother’s funeral in Jodhpur.
Suddenly, on January 27, this year, Afreen said she received the talaqnaama (divorce letter). “It came through a speed post…I was shocked,” she said.
A few days later, she, along with her two brothers, went to her husband’s house in Indore but found it locked. Learning that the family had moved to their ancestral village — Shajapur near Indore — Afreen decided to file an FIR. Her husband was subsequently detained.
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However, when he refused to accept her back, despite counselling sessions and police pressure, Afreen said she decided to challenge the system. “The Muslim Personal Law Board needs to move with the times. I am not opposing them; I just want them to change,” she told The Indian Express. “The existing system is wrong and unfair, and it is crying for reform.”
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