New Delhi: The Chhattisgarh High Court has ruled that divorce orders issued by Sharia courts are not legally valid and that private individuals and religious organizations have no right to alter marital status.
The husband of a Muslim woman named Nirosh Abbasi, from the Tikrapara area of Raipur in Chhattisgarh, died in 2015. Following this, she remarried Mohammed Afeef Khan on July 18, 2020. A disagreement arose between the two over raising the children born from Nirosh’s first marriage.
As a result, after the conflict escalated, Nirosh was subjected to abuse by her in-laws. Following this, Nirosh filed a complaint with the Raipur district SSP on Oct. 7, 2021. Based on this complaint, a case was registered against her husband Aabith Khan and his family. Meanwhile, Aabith Khan claimed that he had divorced Nirosh by pronouncing talaq in accordance with Muslim Sharia law. The matter was taken to Idara-e-Sharia, a prominent Islamic organization in Raipur. It ruled that the divorce given by Aabith Khan was valid.
Challenging this verdict, Nirosh filed a case in the Raipur High Court. Justice Amitendra Kishore Prasad, who heard the case, delivered the judgment. Citing a Supreme Court ruling in a similar case, the judge ordered that private individuals and religious organizations cannot alter the status of any marriage that is lawful under the law.
Furthermore, “The divorce orders issued by Sharia courts are not legally valid. No private religious body, including self-operating Sharia bodies, has legal authority. Although religion is a matter of personal belief, no informal religious organization can be permitted to usurp the powers of a legally established court. There is no place in the country’s Constitution for any alternative justice system,” he noted.
However, the important issue concerning the constitutional validity of the significant “Talaq-e-Hasan” in the Muslim divorce system is already under the Supreme Court’s consideration. Therefore, the court did not attempt to make any observations on that matter in its judgment in this case. This historically significant ruling has made it clear that informal panchayats or religious bodies have no legal right to interfere in family and matrimonial matters.