Bring law to punish those who abandon their wives: Owaisi
File Photo/IANS: Asaduddin Owaisi
New Delhi, Dec 28 (IANS) Those who marry and abandon their wives should be punished and the government should bring a law to this effect, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi said in Parliament on Thursday.
“If at all you want to bring a law, then make a law that if a person marries and abandons his wife, he should be punished,” Owaisi said, without naming anyone, while participating in a discussion on the bill in the Lok Sabha that criminalises triple talaq.
Terming the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights and Marriage) Bill a “bad law”, the Hyderabad MP contended it would prove another handle for the abuse of Muslim women.
He said the word “talaq” was a “verbal abuse” and hence should be dealt with under the Domestic Violence Act.
The All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief demanded that the government should create “a corpus of Rs 1,000 crore” to take care of the women whose husbands would be jailed under this law and the wife would have no means of sustenance.
Owaisi accused the Narendra Modi government of trying to interfere in the Muslim Personal Law through such legislation.
Earlier, as the Bill was being introduced in the House, Owaisi said that justice should be done to “20 lakh abandoned women” from all religions, including “our Bhabhis in Gujarat”, while strongly opposing the introduction of the bill that criminalises triple talaq.
Speaking after Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad tabled the Bill, he said that it violated the fundamental rights and lacked “basic legal coherence”.
Maintaining that not enough consultation was done on the Bill, Owaisi said: “This will be injustice to Muslim women… Make a law where the 20 lakh women from other religions have been abandoned, which also includes our Bhabhis in Gujarat… They should be given justice.”
“There is absence of consistency with the existing legal framework. The bill says the husband will be sent to jail, and it also says he will have to pay allowance… How can a person in jail pay allowance,” he asked, referring to the provision that a woman given triple talaq will have the right to seek maintenance.
