MUMBAI: A 35-year-old woman from Dongri who was given talaq by her builder husband has filed a petition in the Bombay high court seeking a ban on polygamy and nikah halala in the Muslim community. The woman claims that her husband was already married and has urged the court to set aside the talaq pronounced by him without her knowledge and certified by a qazi.Advocate Nitin Satpute, counsel for the petitioner, said the petition is in the pre-admission stage and would be mentioned before the court for hearing. “The legal position (on issues like talaq) has been decided by the Supreme Courts and high courts of this country time to time, but still the Sharia law has been misused to exploit Muslim women,” the petition said.“Polygamy is a practice that has been recognised as an evil plague, similar to Sati, and has also been banned by law in India for all but Muslim citizens...bigamous marriage has been made punishable among Christians by the Christian Marriage Act, among Parsis by the Parsi Marriage and Divorce Act, and among Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs and Jains by the Hindu Marriage Act. However, the Dissolution of Muslim Marriages Act does not secure for Indian Muslim women the protection from bigamy, ” said the petitioner. “A ban on polygamy has long been the need of the hour in the interest of public order and health.” The petition referred to court orders which have held that polygamy is not an integral part of religion.The couple had met on social media 2017 and got married soon after. The woman, who was divorced twice, claimed that the man said that he had divorced his first wife. But the relationship soured soon and she alleged that she was forced to undergo an abortion. The woman later found out that her husband had a second wife too.In June 2018, he sent her a talaq certificate along with the mehr amount. The petition claimed that the talaq was given without her knowledge and there was no attempt at reconciliation as required by the law. She claimed she also told to perform nikah halala and get married to her father-in-law. Nikah halala is the practice where a Muslim divorcee woman has to marry another man, consummate the marriage and then get divorced to remarry her former husband.