Bareilly: Two days after a TOI report highlighted the plight of a Bareilly woman, who was allegedly drugged and raped by her father-in-law for 10 days on the name of nikah-halala, Union minister Arun Jaitley on Friday called for “remedial measures” against “injustice perpetuated” by personal laws. Taking on to Twitter, the senior BJP leader and prominent lawyer also slammed Congress for its promise to scrap the Triple Talaq Bill. Jaitley also wrote at length about the Bareilly incident in his blog titled: “Does the Bareilly ‘nikah halala’ not shock your conscience?”, and shared its link on his Twitter account.He wrote, “A recent case from Bareilly has shocked my conscience. It relates to the obnoxious practice of nikah-halala in Islamic personal law.”He then called for changes in personal laws to ensure that the “rights of women and children are protected”.“Many communities, over the last several decades, have brought incremental but significant changes in their personal laws. The object and direction of these changes have been that gender equality is ensured, rights of women and children are protected and the right to live with dignity is ensured. Some obnoxious practices which survived for centuries (as Sati and Untouchability) are now considered as unconstitutional,” Jaitley wrote.Latching on to the Bareilly incident, Union minister Jaitley accused Congress of “living only for the next day’s headlines”. He claimed that Rahul Gandhi was repeating his father’s “monumental mistake” while referring to the famous Shah Bano’s case.“History has repeated itself, neither as a satire nor as a tragedy. It has repeated itself with a mindset of cruelty. The late Rajiv Gandhi committed a monumental mistake in legislatively overturning the Shah Bano judgment of the Supreme Court which guaranteed maintenance to all Muslim women. He allowed deserted women to be driven to poverty and destitution. Thirty-two years later his son has taken another retrograde step to drive them not merely into destitution but also to live a life which is an antithesis of human existence. The Muslim woman in Bareilly has been forced into animal existence.”Under nikah-halala, a man cannot remarry his former wife unless she weds another man. The woman, who has been given triple talaq, should now consummate the marriage with the other man, get a divorce and observe a period of separation called ‘iddat’.The Bareilly woman was forced to perform the ritual of ‘nikah-halala’ with her father-in-law after her husband gave her instant triple talaq in 2011. The matter came to light on Tuesday during the hearing of a maintenance case in a local court. The woman had filed the case against her husband after he divorced her again in 2017 and was forcing her to perform ‘halala’ with his brother.“Votes are important, so is fairness. Political opportunists only look at the next day’s headlines. Nation-builders look at the next Century,” said Jaitley while ending his blog.The revised bill to make instant triple talaq a punishable offence was passed in the Lok Sabha last year. It is pending in Rajya Sabha.

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