LUCKNOW, 20 October 2006 — An Indian court yesterday jailed a Muslim man for 10 years for the rape of his daughter-in-law, an attack which sparked an uproar after an Islamic council ordered the two to live as man and wife.
Ali Mohammad was arrested in June 2005 after Imrana Bibi, the 28-year-old wife of his poor rickshawpuller son and mother of their five young children, told police she had been raped in Khurba village in northern Uttar Pradesh state.
A Muslim tribunal then decreed Imrana must live as the wife of the man who had raped her and treat her husband as her “son,” outraging feminists and many Muslims.
The tribunal’s opinion was rejected by Shahista Amber, president of the Muslim Women Personal Law Board.
“Those who rape do an unIslamic act ... The father-in-law is a rapist. Imrana cannot be his wife. It would be a haram (forbidden) relationship,” she told TIMES NOW television.
The case sparked heated debates, pitting conservative Muslims against Hindu nationalists as well as feminists, communists and moderate Muslims in the Hindu-majority country where 130 million Muslims follow Islamic personal laws.
South Asia’s most influential Islamic theological school, Darul Uloom Deoband, also in Uttar Pradesh, waded into the row, decreeing Imrana could not live with her husband as she was now prohibited to him according to the Qur’an, fueling the furor and leading to street protests.
The National Commission for Women called for justice for her under India’s secular constitution A judge in Muzaffarnagar, 140 km (90 miles) east of the capital, New Delhi, and a short distance from Khurba, also sentenced Ali to a concurrent three-year jail term for threatening to kill Imrana.
Imrana’s lawyer, Sita Ram, said the verdict was a “great victory for his client. “She has had to battle it out against all kinds of odds and social humiliation in these 16 months.” Neither Imrana nor her husband Noor Ilahi were in court.
R.D. Nimesh, district and sessions judge of Muzaffarnagar, pronounced the judgment in a crowded open court around 4.30 p.m. Holding Ali Mohammad alias Mohammad Ali guilty, the judge sentenced him to 10 years in jail for raping his daughter-in-law and also a three-year jail term for threatening to kill her.
The court also slapped a fine of Rs.10,000 on him. “Rs.8,000 out of this money would be given to Imrana,” government counsel Raj Bahadur Singh said.
“The judge, however, declared that both the imprisonments would be counted simultaneously, so effectively Ali Mohammad would have to spend 10 years in jail,” the lawyer said.
Imrana, mother of two daughters and three sons, has been staying in her parental home ever since the Shariah court asked her not to live with her husband.
