Life has only become worse for Ishrat Jahan, one of the key petitioners against Triple Talaq in the Supreme Court, after the court struck down the Islamic law as “unconstitutional” on 22 August.
Jahan says that she has been ostracised by her community after it became publicly known that she had a key role to play in the verdict against Triple Talaq, as per a report in The Indian Express.
She is being coerced into leaving her home, a 12X7 ft room in a decrepit building in the Muslim-dominated area of Pilkhana in West Bengal’s Howrah district.
Jahan’s ex-husband’s brother, who shares a part of the floor she lives on, also wants her to leave.
They say I am divorced, so why should I be staying where my husband used to stay.Ishrat Jahan
The 30-year-old wonders how she would sustain her family now that no one comes to her to get their clothes stitched, which was how she made a living before the SC verdict. She used to get by with the money she made through her tailoring, and a paltry sum of Rs 2,000 to Rs 3,000 that her sisters would send her.
In an interview to the The Indian Express, she said:
Now no one comes to me. How will I sustain my family?
She has to look after two of her four children, Shayeshta (13) and Zaid (7), who now live with her, and her biggest concern is how to pay for their school. Her other two children live with her ex-husband in Bihar.
I am yet to get them admitted in schools. How will I pay the fees? These days I have to even buy drinking water, since the water pipes are contaminated during the rainy season.
“When I walk down the road, my neighbours turn away. I hear they don’t want me to stay here, some question my character, some say I violated Sharia laws. On Eid, no one called to wish us, no one visited me. I only got a call from my mother in Bihar,” Jahan said.
Married at age 14 to Murtaza Ansari in 2001, Jahan was mistreated by her husband ever since she gave birth to a girl, and her relations with her husband devolved despite her bearing three sons after that.
A few years into her marriage, in 2015 her husband allegedly called her up from Dubai and ‘annulled’ their marriage by pronouncing the words “talaq” three times.
(With inputs from The Indian Express)
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