Court boost for Muslim women

13 August 2010
press trust of india

NEW DELHI, 13 AUG: A Muslim man is bound to maintain his divorced wife and minor children till she gets remarried, Delhi High Court has said in a judgement that calls to mind the Supreme Court’s Shah Bano verdict of 1985.
The High Court said that irrespective of Muslim personal law, under which the husband is bound to maintain his wife only during the Iddat period which is around three months after divorce, the wife is entitled for maintenance under Criminal Procedure Code till she remarries. “It is crystal clear that even a Muslim divorced woman would be entitled to claim maintenance from a Muslim husband till she has not married (again). This being a beneficial piece of legislation (CrPC), the benefit must accrue to the divorced Muslim women,” the court held. “Petition under Section 125 CrPC (pertaining to award of maintenance) would be maintainable (for the wife) before Family Courts so long as she does not remarry and the amount of maintenance to be awarded under the Act cannot be restricted for Iddat period only,” it said.
It further said that the husband owes responsibility to maintain not only his ex-wife but also the minor children living with her. The High Court passed the order while dismissing a petition filed by a man challenging a lower court's award of maintenance of Rs 2,000 per month to his minor daughter living separately with her mother.
Brushing aside the man's contention that the right to get maintenance for the minor children ceases after two years of divorce as provided in personal law, the Court said that the sustenance right cannot be restricted unless the divorcee gets remarried. “I consider that this contention is baseless. Even a wife who has been divorced under Muslim Law is entitled to claim maintenance under the Criminal Procedure Code after the Iddat period... I consider that the benefit cannot be denied to a minor daughter because of any restrictive provision contained in Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986,” Mr Justice SN Dhingra said, referring to the then Rajiv Gandhi government's legislative initiative that effectively overturned the verdict in the Shah Bano case.
The SC, in 1985, had ruled in favour of Muslim divorcee Shah Bano, declaring that her husband should pay her maintenance under Section 125 of the CrPC. But a voluble orthodoxy deemed the verdict an attack on Islam and forced the Rajiv government to enact the 1986 Act, which shifted the onus of maintaining a divorced Muslim woman on her relatives or the Wakf board after the iddat period.

I wonder how long is this victory for muslim women going to last.
People had hailed the verdict during the Shah Bano case but soon Rajiv Gandhi, that spineless Prime Minister of India caved in and overturned the verdict.
One of his Ministers Arif Mohammad Khan had resigned in protest of Rajiv's action.
However, his, Rajiv's wife, Sonia, herself being a woman, is made of sterner stuff.
I don't think she will cave in.
But then Vote Bank Politics is another matter and she too may follow her husband's footsteps.
Only Time can say?