MUMBAI:

In a first for the community, three Dawoodi Bohras living in

were served a sentence by the Supreme

of New South Wales on Thursday morning for carrying out

genital

(FGM), a practice still common among this sect. This also happens to be Australia's first prosecution of an

case.

Four years ago a mother, along with a midwife and a cleric were arrested and released on bail for the

mutilation of two of her minor daughters. After all three were referred for home detention assessment, the girls’ mother and the midwife who performed the cutting were sentenced to 11 months of home detention while Shabbir Vaziri, a senior clergy member, was served a jail term of 11 months on Thursday after he “built a false story to deflect investigation for his offences and directed members of the community to give false accounts to the police,” said the revised ruling.

What is being hailed as a “landmark judgment” and could be a shot in the arm for the movement seeking a ban on FGM in India was denounced by the

authorities in the country. They later released a statement titled “Dawoodi Bohra religion put on trial in Australia” and called the court’s decision “bizarre” and “a travesty of justice.”

Emphasizing that until this trial, the religious procedure practiced for at least 1400 years, had never been legally tested, a spokesman of the

said, “The trial devastated the lives of the very girls the justice system was supposed to protect. The judge engineered convictions despite having no evidence of injury. His desire to leave his legacy and send messages beyond Australia prevailed over his duty to seek justice. Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin has repeatedly instructed his followers to be law-abiding, loyal citizens, and be of benefit to the society in which they live.”

The judge’s decision to reverse the original sentencing was triggered by the sermon delivered by Syedna Mufaddal Saifuddin in Mumbai on April 25 that seemed to encourage

. To support its plea for a more deterrent punishment, the prosecution, or the Crown as it is known in Australia, relied on a transcript of that sermon together with a series of reports that appeared in The Time of India. The TOI was the first to report on the sermon that was heavily circulated within the community.

The court had sought the services of an interpreter to understand the sermon and though they found the interpreter to be a “careful and thorough witness’’ observed that part of the sermon was “somewhat cryptic’’. Significantly, the order says, “A clearer understanding of what was said in the sermon may be found in an article published on 29 April 2016 in

The Times of India

, under the headline

Bohra cleric urges female genital mutilation?

”