A Supreme Court bench of five judges from five different religions began hearing the triple talaq case on Thursday, looking to decide on whether the Muslim tradition should continue in India or was unconstitutional. The judges are Chief Justice of India (CJI) JS Khehar, a Sikh; Justice Kurian Joseph, a Christian; Justice RF Nariman, a Parsi; Justice UU Lalit, a Hindu; and Justice Abdul Nazeer, a Muslim.
The Constitution bench, however, made it clear that it would be hearing the merits of the case and deciding only whether triple talaq was an integral part of religion. It also made it clear that it would not take any decisions on polygamy among Muslims.
The apex court will also look into halala or nikah halala, a provision of Sharia law that prohibits divorced Muslim couples from getting hitched to each other again unless the woman has married someone else and consummated that marriage in the intervening period.
The case the apex court is hearing has come to it from one Shayara Bano from Uttarakhand, who had filed a plea last year saying she was divorced after 13 years of marriage through the triple talaq system.
She had said in her petition: "Muslim women have been given talaq over Skype, Facebook and even text messages. There is no protection against such arbitrary divorce. They have their hands tied while the guillotine of divorce dangles perpetually ready to drop at the whims of their husbands who enjoy undisputed power."
This has been the case even recently, when a spate of such incidents surfaced all over India. And strangely enough, even newspaper advertisements and WhatsApp text messages have been used to divorce Muslim women!
