The Hyderabad Police on Oct. 23 booked an NRI for allegedly divorcing his wife through an advertisement in a regional newspaper. Mohammed Manaziruddin, who is a resident of London, married 24-year-old Noor Khan Bazaar from Hyderabad in September 2015, according to the Hussainialam Police.
“Manaziruddin promised to take me to London, but he never did,” Noor told the Deccan Chronicle. “After the marriage, he came to India twice and was in touch with me until this July. I found out that he had placed an advertisement for divorce in May without telling me about it.”
A case of cheating has been registered against him by the police. This is not the first case of divorce where a newspaper was used to declare talaq. A Saudi Arabia-based banker, Mohammed Mushtaquddin, also divorced his 25-year-old wife in Hyderabad in a similar fashion in April this year. The couple had a 10-month-old baby at the time. He posted the ad in a local Urdu daily.
”If I did anything wrong, he should have spoken to me and my parents,” the woman was quoted as saying by NDTV. “If I was wrong he should have given talaq in front of everyone as he has married me in front of all relatives. Why did he run away to Saudi Arabia without meeting me… and divorce me through an ad even with a 10-month-old baby.”
In the same month, the Hyderabad Police nabbed a man for sending a postcard with “Triple Talaq” written on it to divorce a woman he had married eight days earlier. He was still legally married to the first wife when he sent his new wife the postcard.
Cases where divorce has been declared through WhatsApp or Facebook status have also emerged in the past.
Triple Talaq is considered an old Islamic practice of divorcing a woman by saying “talaq” thrice. In August this year, the Supreme Court of India pronounced the practice of Triple Talaq among Indian Muslims as “unconstitutional, manifestly arbitrary and void in law”. The ruling was hailed by many who said the practice was unjust to Muslim women and a threat to their fundamental rights.