Muslim marriage a contract; not a ritual like Hindu marriage: Karnataka High Court

Muslim marriage a contract; not a ritual like Hindu marriage: Karnataka High Court

Judge decides on maintenance under the Muslim Law

In yet another case of a hapless Muslim divorced wife battling for two decades for executing a maintenance decree, the Karnataka High Court has stood in support of the woman.

The Court held that a Muslim man is duty-bound to make provision for his ex-wife's maintenance beyond the iddat period. This, despite paying the mehr, if she remains unmarried and is incapable of maintaining herself.

Justice Krishna S Dixit ruled that Muslim marriage is an agreement of many shades; not a sacrament as opposed to a Hindu marriage. He said that it did not repel certain rights and obligations arising from the dissolution.

The case concerns a petition filed by Ezazur Rehman (52) in Bhuvaneshwari Nagar, Bengaluru. The petitioner prayed for quashing an order passed by the Family Court in 2011. The Court had directed him to pay a monthly maintenance amount of Rs.3,000 to his wife Saira Banu (42), from the date of the case until the death of the plaintiff or until she remarries, or until the death of the defendant.

Rehman had divorced Banu in 1991. Banu complained of dowry harassment and left the matrimonial house after eight months of marriage. The mehr amount fixed at Rs.5,000, was paid to her along with Rs.900 as maintenance during the iddat period.

After the divorce, Rehman re-married. Subsequently, Banu filed a civil case for maintenance in 2002. But the ex-husband refused on grounds that he had begotten a child and had also been acquitted in the dowry harassment case.

The single-judge bench observed that a Muslim man could not deny maintenance to the ex-wife on the ground of 'remarriage.' The judge maintained that the petitioner ought to have known his responsibility towards his ex-wife and the onus of paying maintenance arises from his own act of talaq and prior to marrying another woman.

Quoting the Quran and Hadith, the judge said the right of a divorced woman for maintenance is conditioned on three cumulative factors - insignificant mehr amount, the inability of the woman to sustain herself, and if she does not remarry.

A Muslim marriage "dissolved by divorce, per se does not annihilate all the duties and obligations of parties by lock, stock and barrel." He further added, "In law, new obligations too may arise, one of them being the circumstantial duty of a person to provide sustenance to his ex-wife who becomes destitute by divorce."

The Court said the petitioner's contention is repugnant to law, morality and ethics and that if such a contention is countenanced, it would only encourage talaq, which the law shuns. Citing various conventions on human and particularly women's rights, the judge pointed out that divorce brings hardships to women, and more so to divorced Muslim women.

Divorced women's tears are "hidden in their veils", he noted. It is not that unscrupulous men do not know this. On mehr, the judge said the payment of frugal mehr money per se could not be a defence for an able-bodied man to defy the decree for maintenance.

Justice Dixit imposed an amount of Rs.25,000 on Rehman and requested the trial court judge to execute the same on a war footing and report compliance to the registrar general of the High Court within three months.