In an appalling incident, a Muslim man from Jaipur 'lost' his ex-wife in a bet with a male friend, then made her sleep with the other man by drugging her on the excuse of nikah halala.
Nikah halala is a process by which a divorced Muslim couple may be reunited.
The Indian Express explained it as follows:
After the talaq, the only way a man can then go back to living with his wife is through a nikah halala. This requires her to go through the entire process all over again — remarry, consummate the second marriage, get divorced, observe the iddatz period and then come back to him.
In this case, according to a report in Hindustan Times, the 50-year-old man had divorced his 42-year-old wife about eight months ago, after 25 years of marriage, using the triple talaq. They have two grown-up sons and the reason behind the estrangement was, allegedly, her repeated refusal to have sex with his friends, which he insisted on. Although her husband divorced her in a fit of anger over this matter, the woman claimed they continued to live together and have conjugal relations.
On 5 August, the man took his wife out for a drive and gave her some pills, insisting she was unwell. She woke up some time later naked, in the bed of her husband's friend. When she screamed for help, her husband reportedly came running in and asked her not to make a 'big deal' out of the issue. That's when he tried to justify the incident by saying that it was all for nikah halala.
"I cannot get over the insult and shame meted out to me. My husband got me raped by his friend. I feel angry, depressed, scared," the wife, who has now filed a police complaint for rape, told HT. "There was no nikah with the friend. It's a case of rape, not halala," she insisted.
According to reports, the husband also has a video of his friend raping her.
As of now, a police complaint has been registered but no arrests have been made.
The Muslim method of divorcing a wife, the triple talaq — when a man simply repeats the word 'talaq' three times over phone, text or in person, and they couple are considered divorced — has become a subject of debate in India.
Several human rights organisations, NGOs as well as the government are trying to abolish the archaic practice of triple talaq and usher in the Uniform Civil Code (UCC), which replaces personal laws based on the scriptures and customs of major religious communities with a common set of rules governing every citizen of India.
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