7/23/2020 Muslim women too are covered under Domestic Violence Act: Bombay HC - Times of India

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Muslim women too are covered under Domestic

Violence Act: Bombay HC
TNN | May 15, 2018, 01.05 AM IST

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court has, in an important order, said that
Muslim women cannot be barred from seeking protection under the
Domestic Violence Act. Justice Bharati Dangre dismissed a Mumbai-
based Muslim man’s plea and upheld a family court’s order directing him
to pay Rs 1.05 lakh as monthly maintenance and rent for a house for his
wife and two children.

The man had claimed that they belong to the “Islamic Alvi Bohra
Community” and were governed by the Muslim Personal Law, so the
special anti-domestic violence law was not applicable to them.

The HC said that the Domestic Violence Act does not exclude Muslim
women. “(The DV Act) is an enactment to provide for effective protection for rights of women guaranteed under the
Constitution who are the victims of violence. It does not indicate any intention either express or implied to exclude Muslim
women,” said Justice Dangre. The judge said the law was in addition to other laws available to women and “the scheme of the
enactment do not restrict the applicability of the provisions of the Act to a particular category of women, or to a woman
belonging to a particular religion”.

The man's claim that he had pronounced Talaq and remarried would not absolve him of his responsibility, the court held. “The
fact of Talaq has not been proved by the husband and merely because Talaknama is tendered in the court, the marriage cannot
be said to have been dissolved. Even assuming for the sake of it the marriage stands dissolved by Khula taking it to be divorce

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7/23/2020 Muslim women too are covered under Domestic Violence Act: Bombay HC - Times of India

by consent at the instance of the wife, the husband cannot be completely absolved of his liability to maintain his wife and
children, in the specific background, that he has remarried,” said the judge. The HC agreed with the family court that “the
husband owed a moral responsibility to maintain them specifically in case of a subsisting marriage”.

The couple had married in 1997 and have two children. In 2015, the woman approached the family court to dissolve the
marriage on the grounds of cruelty. The court in 2017 ordered the man to pay Rs 65,000 as monthly maintenance to his wife
and children and Rs 40,000 as rent for a house.

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