Bengal Governor urged to ensure triple talaq petitioner’s security

Kolkata, Sep 4 (IANS) A five-member delegation on Monday met West Bengal Governor Keshri Nath Tripathi and urged him to ensure physical and economic security to triple talaq petitioner Ishrat Jahan after the Supreme Court struck down the practice.

The joint platform of three groups Pragatishil Muslim Samaj, Reformist Muslim Society and Secular Mission -- which stands for abolition of triple talaq and polygamy -- also expressed concern over the situation in the state post the judgement and recommended that more efforts be put in by the state administration to ensure women's security.

"We met the Governor of West Bengal to apprise him of the situation of triple talaq petitioner Ishrat Jahan," Syed Tanveer Nasreen of the Joint Movement Committee told reporters here after meeting the Governor.

"After the practice was scrapped by the Supreme Court, there has been enormous pressure on this woman from her family, from her neighbourhood and from certain sections of her community."

There has been a lot of slandering on her character because she stood up against this barbaric custom of triple talaq, Nasreen added.

"We want her physical security and we also want her economic security to be ensured as she does not have any provision for her maintenance," she said.

Despite the state government's promise to provide necessary security for Ishrat Jahan and her children, the members of the committee alleged that they found no such arrangements in and around her house when they met her on Monday morning.

"We visited her this morning but we haven't come across any security arrangement in her house or in the neighbourhood as was promised by the state government," Nasreen said, adding the Governor has assured them that he would look into the issue.

About the mental torture the family is going through, she claimed Jahan's son is in a state of trauma after being "briefly abducted" by his own father. "He thinks whoever comes to their house is going to abduct him."

Ishrat Jahan, a resident of Howrah district, lodged a police complaint last Thursday alleging her two children were abducted. However, by late evening, police said that her husband had taken the children without informing the mother and later dropped them.

Ishrat Jahan had recently written to Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee appealing for police protection in the wake of "threats" to her life.