New Delhi: In the first criminal prosecution under the Uniform Civil Code (UCC) in the state, the Uttarakhand Police Thursday charged a Muslim man with nullifying his marriage through the banned practice of triple talaq, and then forcing his wife into halala.
The accused, identified as Mohammed Danish from Haridwar’s Buggawala block, was booked by police on the complaint of his wife Shaheen, who alleged that his family initially harassed her for dowry, followed by forceful dissolution of marriage and coercion into halala.
Halala is a practice in some interpretations of Muslim personal law, where a divorced woman has to marry another man, consummate that marriage, and subsequently get divorced or widowed before she can legally remarry her first husband. The practice stands banned in Uttarakhand following the enactment of Uttarakhand Uniform Civil Code Act, 2024.
The promulgation and implementation of the UCC was a manifesto promise of the ruling BJP, and a cause dear to Chief Minister Pushkar Singh Dhami. According to Section 30(2) of the UCC, a person has the right to remarry their divorced spouse without any condition, such as marrying a third person before such remarriage, thus legally abolishing the practice of halala. Addressing a ‘UCC Day’ function earlier in January this year, Dhami had called the legislation a “golden chapter” in the history of the young state.
In the current case, the complainant, Shaheen, had approached the police last month with allegations that her husband, Mohammed Danish, along with his family members, had tortured her for dowry for months before he dissolved the marriage, pronouncing talaq thrice in public.
Having been married according to Sunni tradition, Shaheen said she wanted to stay with her husband. Danish, she alleged, asked her to adopt halala with a person of his choice before she could be married again and return home.
This wasn’t the first time, the FIR registered on 4 April at the Buggawala Police Station said. In every such episode, Shaheen said her husband asked her to do halala “wherever I say” as a condition for her return to his house. “After that, I will think about whether to adopt you. This has happened many times before. The applicant has been taken advantage of in this manner and sexually harassed, and now the same method has been adopted again,” says the FIR.
According to the FIR, the accused planned to carry out the act once again. “The applicant has a son whose age is seven months. In such a situation, the applicant has been a huge burden on her parents to this day, and there is a need for maintenance expenses.”
Based on the complaint, the Uttarakhand Police had last month booked Danish, his mother Gulshana, and his brothers Mohammed Javed, Parvez, Arshad, and other family members under Sections 3 and 4 of the Dowry Prohibition Act, Sections 3 and 4 of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act and Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) Sections 115(2) and 85.
After conducting a probe and recording statements of the witnesses, including the complainant, the state police invoked Sections 32(1)(ii) and 32(1)(iii) of the UCC provisions that prescribe a punishment of three years for contraventions of the law related to dissolution of marriage and conditions for remarriage. These sections have been slapped against Danish alone, while the other seven accused have been charged with the sections in the chargesheet filed by the police earlier this month.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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