of a hapless woman seeking divorce
Shariq Majeed
Tribune News Service

Kalakote (Rajouri), November 11
Pervez Akhter has failed to get divorce even after more than three years of separation fom husband Shabir Ahmed of Dalyote here. Her soldier husband has been declared a deserter by the regiment he was posted with and has been missing for more than three years leaving Akhter in the lurch.

Akhter wants to remarry but can’t, as she is waiting for Shabir to come and solemnise the divorce (talaaq). Since no one knows the whereabouts of Shabir, she can’t get talaaq, since Islamic law requires her husband to divorce her. (In special conditions there is provision of talaaq for half widows, but local mullahs have failed to come up with a solution).

Shabir was declared deserter by the Army when he failed to join duty at 318 Field Regiment posted at Chandigarh on May 19, 2004. He proceeded on leave in March 2004 and had to return by May.

Pervez alleges that her husband and in-laws used to harass her for dowry. She says Shabir came on two-month leave in March 2004 and asked her to accompany him in seven days of reaching home and they then headed towards Chandigarh. “After we reached a secluded place, he inflicted serious wounds on me and deserted me leaving me for dead,” Pervez says. “However, I regained consciousness and found myself in a ditch on the roadside. I crawled towards the road. Luckily an auto-rickshaw driver spotted me and finding me bleeding profusely, he informed the police”.

“The police shifted me to the PGI, Chandigarh. Fortunately, a doctor from Rajouri was working there and he informed my parents here”, she narrates. “After the incident, when I returned home we enquired about Shabir from his unit, but they told us that Shabir hadn’t reported there. Till now he is absconding,” she said.

Facing trying times, Pervez applied to the Army authorities for the settlement of her husband’s account and also got a case registered against him and in-laws for torturing her for dowry.

“After my husband went missing and did not turn up even after a year, I approached the local mullahs for allowing me to remarry,” she says. “But they told me I could not remarry till my husband divorced me”.

“I am from a poor family. How can I survive if they don’t allow me to remarry?” she asks. “If he doesn’t return, I will die due to poverty as there is no other earning hand in my family”.

A local mullah said, “There are fatwas (diktats) in Islam for cases like this. These fatwas clearly say a woman has to wait for 90 years even if her husband doesn’t return.But, I have heard that Islamic intellectuals have devised some way for such cases. We will have to study these before allowing Pervez to remarry”.