Updates on Triple Talaq Hearing from Supreme Court - Day 4

Indian Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told Supreme Court on Monday that the government is ready to bring a new law pertaining to "triple talaq" matter if the practice is banned by the court.

Nikah halala allows a woman to go back to her husband but only after she marries someone else, consummates the marriage and gets a divorce.

A five-judge seat of the summit court additionally watched that it would not hear polygamy issue alongside the triple talaq case.

The bench said "it may not be possible to deal with all the three issues in the limited time we have. We will keep them pending for future", the bench said.

This prompted Justice Kurian Joseph to say that the practice of triple talaq will be un-Quranic as it does not have any basis in the Quran.

"As per Islamic law, the female can not remarry during "iddat" period and any marriage taking place during "Iddat" period can not be termed as valid marriage", he said, adding that the woman got divorced from her first husband on October 4, 2012 and the second nikah was performed two days later. "What we are seeing in the form of triple talaq is similar to the pre-Islamic era practice where female infants were buried alive", he had said.

"Triple talaq is unconstitutional". Sibal asked the apex court.

The senior Congress leader representing the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB) was presenting his arguments in the Supreme Court over Triple Talaq.

The board brought up the long-pending dispute over building a temple to Lord Ram in Ayodhya, which Hindus believe is his birth place, before a five-judge constitution bench which is hearing petitions demanding scrapping of the controversial divorce practice.

In the course of the hearing, pointing to the inertia in the evolution of the Muslim Personal Law, Rohatgi said that as far as Hindus were concerned, various steps were taken to bring their laws in conformity with the Constitution but that has not happened with Muslims, who had a Shariat Act in 1937, then in 1939 and then some change in 1986 in the wake of Shah Bano case.

To this, the bench said then the government will say "Mr Reformist this is not your domain, you have to be within your limit". The Attorney-General said all three forms of triple talaq - talaq-e-biddat, talaq hasan and talaq ahasan - are "unilateral, extrajudicial, unequal" and have to be struck down. We can't go into rights and wrongs of a religious belief.

The Board had even taken a weird ground that if triple talaq was discontinued, a Muslim husband may even murder his wife to get rid of her. That's why the Constituent assembly separated personal laws from customs and practices. Immediately after a few years of the death of Prophet Muhammad, the companions of Prophet Muhammad talked about triple talaq.

The bench insisted that the government has to prove that this practice of triple talaq was not essential to Islam and only then can it delve further into other aspects.