MEERUT:

On Thursday

The happiness of a new bride in Baghpat has turned out to be tragically short-lived. Denied a car as he had demanded, the husband pronounced triple talaq just two hours after the nikah in a Baghpat village. The matter was before the village panchayat which imposed a fine of Rs 2.25 lakh on the groom’s family and has banned the man from marrying for the next three years.The incident occurred in Daha village of Baghpat where the nikah of one Mohsina was conducted with Mohd Arif of Bhagwanpur. The two villages are just 7 kilometres apart.According to the girl’s family, they had arranged all other household items as desired by the groom’s family. However, he was disappointed to learn at the time of the ceremony that there was no car in the dowry. “He kept taunting the bride all through the ceremony and later as well,” Yusuf Ahmad, Mohsina’s uncle, said.“She was in tears when she rang us barely a couple of hours after the ceremony. Eventually, we brought her back home,” he said.Soon after this, the two sides tried to find out a solution but couldn’t arrive at any. “The matter was brought before the village panchayat, but Arif stuck to his demand. Later, under pressure, Arif allowed his wife to come back home, but this time, Mohsina refused to go to her in-laws’ house. Agitated by what he called her stubbornness, Arif gave triple talaq to her over phone,” her uncle said.Former village pradhan Charan Singh, who is a member of the panchayat, said, “, the panchayat decided that Arif would provide a sum of Rs 2.25 lakh as compensation to the woman’s family and also barred him from marrying for three years.”Notably, there has been a growing resistance across the country against the controversial practice of triple talaq. In June, over 50,000 Muslim women and men had signed a petition seeking a ban on it. The petition, spearheaded by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, had sought the National Commission for Women's intervention to end this "unQuranic practice". Andolan’s co-founder Zakia Soman said a national signature campaign was underway in different states, including Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, MP, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Odisha, West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand, Kerala and UP.