MUMBAI: From keeping women out of “perverse reach” to physiological matters like menstruation, a whole host of reasons have been cited by the Haji Ali Dargah Trust to keep women out of the shrine’s sanctum.

The trust’s response was to the Bombay high court (HC) on a PIL by activists Noorjehan Niaz and Zakia Soman of Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Andolan, who challenged the ban.

In its affidavit, filed by Masood Dada, the trust says the ban was imposed when the trustees were made to realize by Muslim clergy that allowing women into the dargah’s sanctum was a “sin”; parallel arrangements were made so that women’s prayers were not disturbed. The trust has mentioned that many mosques and dargahs, including two-thirds of such places in the US and Europe, “put women behind a barrier or partition or in another room as divisions were built centuries ago”.

The trust says that its office—situated on the dargah’s premises—received complaints of men teasing women and belongings being stolen when women were praying. “At times, it would be noticed that some perverted men would get close to a woman to touch her inappropriately,” reads the affidavit. It says the trustees, in the hope of a solution, thought it fit to segregate women and men, and in doing so, acted on the advice of Muslim scholars and followed the Supreme Court’s directives to check sexual harassment of women in places of worship.

Trustee Dada has written in the affidavit that the petitioners have forgotten a “big aspect: that a woman can at any time have menstrual periods”. He writes that many traditional religions consider the physiological phenomenon “ritually unclean” and the major religions of the world, “without exception”, have placed restrictions on women undergoing it, “leading to prohibitions on physical intimacy, cooking, attending places of worship, and sometimes requiring women to live separately from men”.

The affidavit refers to the Supreme Court’s dismissal of a PIL challenging the ban on women aged 10-50 years at the Ayyappa Temple in Sabarimala, Kerala. Urging dismissal of the PIL against the dargah with exemplary costs, trustee Dada asserts that under Article 26 of the Constitution, a body like the dargah trust has the right to manage its own affairs in matters of religion. The first hearing in the case will be on Wednesday.