HC relief for Muslim woman seeking conjugal rights

MUMBAI: It may have taken a 26-year-old woman to pave the way for other Muslim women to voice and seek their conjugal rights. Offering hope to scores of Muslim women separated or shunned by their husbands, the Bombay HC recently directed the family court to hear afresh the petition of a young woman seeking to restore her right to companionship and sexual relations within her marriage. Zeenat Khanfought for almost a year in the family court at Bandra for her right to get backtogether with her husband of five years, only to have the door slammed on herface. The family court judge offered no reasoning or explanations, except thatMohammedan law does not allow a wife to make such anapplication.Zeenat had married Ahmed, a Mahim resident, on December30, 2005. Within a year, she had a baby boy. But she says Ahmed only visited heronce at the hospital to ‘‘see the baby’s face’’and then began demanding Rs 5 lakh but did not take her back home. His familytoo did not allow her to ‘‘enter the house.’’She reported the ‘‘threats he gave to the police and inApril 2009 finally approached the family court for a legal way out of hermarital trouble. Zeenat moved the HC in February to challenge the‘‘illegal and arbitrary order of the family court on the groundsthat Islamic law scholars have written that a wife governed by Mohammedan lawtoo is entitled to seek restitution of conjugal rights in court.’’She relied on an authoritative book by Dr Tahir Mahmood, a former law commissionmember.