Delhi man nabbed for giving triple talaq to wife

He confirmed his divorce over a WhatsApp text.

A 34-year-old man was booked and arrested on Friday for allegedly giving triple talaq to his wife in north Delhi’s Azad Market, police said.

Triple Talaq is a crime. A north delhi man has been arrested. (HT FILE)

The incident — the first recorded in the national capital since the law banning triple talaq was passed in the Parliament on July 30 — took place on June 23. Two days later the man sent a text over WhatsApp to his wife confirming his divorce.

Nupur Prasad, deputy commissioner of police (north), said that the 30-year-old woman approached the Bara Hindu Rao police station with a complaint on Friday after which her husband was arrested.

“We have booked the woman’s husband under section 4 of The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019,” said the DCP. The Section 4 of the act carries a maximum jail term of three years and a fine.

Prasad said that the law was applied in retrospective as the new act is deemed to be in effect since September 19, 2018.

The incident in Delhi came over a week after a man was booked for a similar offence in Haryana’s Nuh on August 1.

HT is withholding the identities of the couple in the Delhi case as the woman requested for privacy and refused to speak on the issue.

In her statement to the police, the woman said that she had married the man in November 2011. The man runs a flooring business in north Delhi, while the woman is a homemaker, said the DCP. The couple has a six-year-old son.

The woman alleged that she was being harassed by her husband and in-laws since the beginning of their marriage, because she couldn’t fulfil their “demand for dowry”.

“I bore the cruelties inflicted by them in the hope that all will be well with the passage of time. I wanted to save my marriage,” her statement in the first information report (FIR) read.

The alleged harassment continued and ended with the triple talaq on June 23, when her in-laws pressured her husband, under a “well-planned conspiracy” to give triple talaq to her.

“My son and I were then asked to leave the house. We went back to my maternal home (in Wazirabad) as my parents were abroad,” she said. Two days later, the woman’s brother received a text on his mobile phone, informing him that the divorce process was completed, she added.

DCP Prasad said that the woman decided to approach the police after her attempts to persuade her husband failed. In her statement to the police, the woman has demanded that the guilty be punished and her husband be asked to arrange maintenance for her and their son.