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November 4, 2006
India: Rape Victim Driven From Home By Muslim Village Court
In a village in Murshidabad district, West Bengal state in eastern India, a Muslim panchayat (village court or council) has pronounced that a woman has been barred from entering the village. The panchayat also ruled that her marriage to her husband is annulled, states Zee News.
The reason for such draconian measures is that, three months ago, the woman had been a victim of rape. The woman and her husband, the panchayat ruled, could not remain as husband and wife, even though they have four children together. It was ruled that the couple could only remain together if they paid 50,000 rupees ($1,115). As her husband is a labourer, the couple are unable to pay this fee.
The rape victim, who had been raped on July 25 in Katabagan village, filed a police case yesterday. She claimed that a local man with a reputation for violence, Mansoor Ali, had raped her in front of her four children.
When she initially tried to register the case with the local police, they refused her. Police Superintendent Rahul Srivasatava intervened and yesterday the rape charge was officially filed.
The woman's husband told the press: "I want to keep my wife as it is not her fault, but people are not allowing me to keep her. Who will look after our four children?" His family had said that his wife was no longer morally allowed to stay in the house after being involved with another man. The woman's stepmother refused to allow the woman to stay at her father's house.
The village panchayat had then taken up the issue, and ruled that the marriage was annulled. It also ordered Mansoor Ali, the alleged rapist, to pay 18,000 rupees ($401) as a fine. Ali did not pay the money.
The case has echoes of one which happened to a woman called Imrana. She had been raped by her husband's father in June, 2005, in a village in western Uttar Pradesh state, northern India. The panchayat ruled that Imrana, a mother of five, could no longer be considered married to her husband, Nur Ilahi. Further, the village court ruled that she should thenceforward assume herself married to Ali Mohammed, the 65-year old rapist, and should refer to the father of her children as her "son".
Imrana refused to accept the ruling, but the Darul Uloom, a major Islamic seminary at Deoband, issued a fatwa on June 24, 2005. This stated that although Imrana was not "married" to her rapist, the marriage to her husband was annulled.
On October 19 last month, Imrana's rapist was jailed for 10 years by a district court in Muzaffarnagar. The rapist was further fined 10,000 rupees ($222), 8,000 rupees ($178) of which should be awarded to Imrana.
Despite the court ruling, Muslim leaders are still debating the issue, with some saying that Imrana was still not entitled to live with her husband, and others maintaining that she was still married to her rapist. The Deoband fatwa had employed the fiqh (jurisprudence) of the Hanafi sub-sect of Sunni Islam to declare her marriage void.
Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at November 4, 2006 10:24 AM
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