MADURAI: The Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court recently observed in a case that if a Muslim woman disputes the pronouncement of talaq, the husband must obtain a judicial declaration for dissolution of marriage. Such declaration can be issued only by courts and not a Shariat Council, which is a private body, it added.
Justice GR Swaminathan made the observations while dismissing a revision petition filed by a Muslim man against an order passed by a lower court in Tirunelveli, directing him to pay Rs 5 lakh compensation and Rs 25,000 monthly maintenance to his wife over charges of cruelty. While the man claimed to have served three talaq notices to his wife in 2017 and subsequently married another woman, the wife denied the claim and said she did not receive the third notice and that their marriage still subsists.
Justice Swaminathan stated that if the husband claims that he had divorced the first wife by properly pronouncing talaq thrice and it is disputed by the wife, then the husband must go to the court and obtain a judicial declaration that the marriage has been validly dissolved. “As long as such a declaration has not been obtained from the jurisdictional court, the resultant effect is that the marriage is deemed to subsist,” the judge added.
The judge also refused to accept the marriage dissolution certificate issued by the Shariat Council of Tamil Nadu, Thowheed Jamath, to the petitioner. “Only courts duly constituted by the state can deliver judgments. Shariat Council is a private body and not a court,” he said.
He further observed that if a Hindu, Christian, Parsi or Jewish man contracts a second marriage during the subsistence of the first marriage, it would constitute cruelty, besides being an offence of bigamy. The same proposition would apply to Muslims as well, he opined. While it is true that a Muslim man is legally entitled to contract as many as four marriages and the wife cannot stop it, she has the right to seek maintenance and refuse to be a part of the matrimonial household, he added.