Triple Talaq will be misused, alleges Owaisi

New Delhi [India], Dec 27 (ANI): Hours after the Triple Talaq bill was passed in Lok Sabha, All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi on Thursday voiced his dissent, claiming that the proposed legislation will be misused.
Owaisi alleged that Triple Talaq will bring Muslim women to the roads and will ruin them and to put Muslim men behind the bars.
"This law is to bring only Muslim women to the roads, to ruin them and weaken them, and to put Muslim men in jail. The law will be misused, you will see," Owaisi told reporters here.
The bill, known as Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill is a watered down version of the one which was passed by the Lok Sabha earlier and had got stalled in the Rajya Sabha.
The Lok Sabha passed the Triple Talaq bill which makes the practice a criminal offence with a provision of three-year jail term for the erring husband. It will now have to be passed by the Rajya Sabha to become a law.
The legislation, which replaces an Ordinance issued by the government in September, was passed by the Lower House of Parliament after the government asserted that it should not be seen from the prism of politics as 20 Islamic countries have already banned the practice and not secular India.
Among the various changes made in the initial bill, the new legislation has a provision for bail and mandates that an FIR should be filed only by the aggrieved woman or a blood relative.
The bill makes the offence of instant Triple Talaq compoundable, which means that the case can be withdrawn if the man and his estranged wife reach a compromise, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said while piloting the legislation.
The instant triple talaq was taken up in Parliament in August last year after a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional a law that allowed Muslim men to divorce their wives simply by uttering "talaq" three times in quick succession.
In the landmark 3-2 verdict, the apex court found the practice un-Islamic and "arbitrary", and disagreed that Triple Talaq was an integral part of religious practice. (ANI)