By IANS
New Delhi : The Supreme Court Thursday restrained a court in Aurangabad from acting on a plea of a Muslim man who claimed a Srinagar girl to be his wife and sought judicial order to restore his “conjugal rights”.
A bench headed by Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan restrained the Aurangabad’s family court from taking any action on Jafri Syed Husain’s plea, after it heard a petition from the Srinagar girl, who vehemently denied that she ever married the man.
In her petition, the Srinagar girl told the apex court that Jafri has moved the Aurangabad family court claiming she had given herself to him in what is known as Muttah, or contract marriage, for a period of 50 years. Such marriage is permissible under the Shia sect in Islam, to which she and the man belong, the girl said.
Denying she ever married 40-year-old Jafri, father of five children with a wife, the girl’s counsel Kavita Wadia told the apex court that the man moved the Aurangaband court for restitution of his “conjugal rights”.
On the petition of Jafri, a wealthy scrap dealer, the Aurangabad’s family court issued notice to the girl in Srinagar.
Wadia told the apex court bench, which also included Justice R.V. Raveendran and Justice Dalveer Bhandari, that the girl never visited Aurangabad, except once when she stayed there with her father.
The girl’s father was posted as the manager of Aurangabad branch of the Jammu and Kashmir Bank for a brief period between mid-2006 and September 2007.
It was during this period that Jafri became friendly with the girl’s father, said Wadia, adding that at times he even offered to help him with matrimonial proposals for the girl’s elder sister.
But then suddenly he proposed marriage to the girl and began troubling the family with the “obnoxious proposal” that was outrightly rejected, said Wadia.
As Jafri kept on harassing the family, the girl’s father contacted his superior officers at Srinagar and got himself transferred back to his native state.
At this, the man moved Aurangabad court, claiming that the girl had got married to him during her brief stay there and had even consummated her marriage with him.
The man wanted the Aurangabad court to order the girl to start living with him as husband and wife in Arangabad, said Wadia.
At this, the girl moved the apex court, seeking its direction to transfer the man’s petition to a Srinagar court to enable her to properly defend herself against the man’s charges.