LUCKNOW: After Atia Sabri, Saharanpur’s Shagufta Shah, mother of two daughters, has petitioned Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the contentious issue of Triple Talaq (handing out divorce by uttering Talaq thrice) on Wednesday. Her husband divorced her after she refused to abort her third child.
Shagufta has written to the PM seeking his intervention in her case. She urged Modi to put a ban on the practice which was “un-Islamic” and “inhuman”, she said in her letter to the PM. Shagufta has been abandoned by her husband Shamshad Shah.
“I have voted for the BJP in the recently-concluded UP elections. Now I want the government to stop this practice and PM Modi should keep his promise,” said Shagufta, who has sent a copy of the letter to Uttar Pradesh CM Yogi Adityanath also. However, various Muslim outfits, including All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), have been quite vocal in support of the Triple Talaq calling it a practice in conformance with Holy Quran and Sharia.
Shagufta had to bear the brunt of the practice when she refused to give in to her in-laws’ demand of aborting her third child. “My husband and my in-laws wanted me to abort this child. I have got two daughters and they feared that it would be a girl again,” she said.
Her refusal was perceived by her husband as defiance and a trail of torture and physical abuse followed. Even then, when her husband failed to change her decision, he pronounced Talaq thrice, leaving the woman to fend for herself. "I was beaten black and blue. This continued for a long time. On day, my husband verbally divorced me uttering ‘talaq’ thrice,” she said, adding that she was finally thrown out of the house.
During BJP’s poll campaign, the Triple Talaq issue emerged as a prominent narrative to woo Muslim women to vote for the party. Even BJP’s Lok Kalyan Sankalp Patra had the issue with the commitment to fight it out on behalf of Muslim women in the court of law. The Supreme Court has been hearing a number of petitions against the practice. While the Central government has filed an affidavit in the court over the issue, the AIMPLB opposed PILs filed against the practice.