Man held for rape, triple talaq in Bhiwandi
The accused has been identified as Raju alias Siraj Qureshi, a resident of Bhiwandi. He has been married for 10 years and has four children.
The Bhiwandi city police have arrested a man for allegedly raping and giving triple talaq to a 27-year-old woman in Bhiwandi on August 24. The accused has been identified as Raju alias Siraj Qureshi, a resident of Bhiwandi. He has been married for 10 years and has four children.
According to an FIR lodged by the victim, she married a man from Raebareli in Uttar Pradesh in 2012 under Hindu customs and has a seven-year-old daughter from the union.
She separated from her husband in 2018, and she and her daughter began living with her elder sister in Bhiwandi. In 2019, she got a friend request from the accused through a social media app in which he identified himself as Raju. Later, both contacted each other through social media.
The accused told the woman that he owned a hotel in the Gaibi Nagar area in Bhiwandi and that he was unmarried. He then proposed marriage to her, assuring her that he would take care of both her and her daughter.
He allegedly raped the woman at a lodge in Bhiwandi in 2020. On January 26 that year, he married the woman according to Hindu customs, the police official said, quoting the FIR.
A year after their wedding, the victim was shocked when the accused revealed his true identity as Siraj Qureshi and asked the woman to convert to Islam if she wanted to live with him. The woman accepted his demand, and they married again according to Islamic customs.
In May this year, Qureshi told the woman that he was already married with four children, and would lose his share in his ancestral property if they continued their relationship,” said the police official. “He then gave her triple talaq.”
The victim further stated in the FIR that on May 4 this year, the accused beat her when she refused to sign the talaq documents and made her sign them using force. On August 20, she went to the local corporator’s office in Bhiwandi for a meeting with the accused and his family. She said the corporator told her that her divorce had been completed, and if she wanted to live with the accused again, she would have to undergo ‘nikah halala’ under the Shariat law. In this process, the woman is made to ‘marry’ another person, who has to consummate the marriage before the woman can marry her first husband again.
The woman then approached the police, following which a case was registered against Qureshi under Sections 420 (Cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property), 376 (Punishment for rape), 506 (Criminal intimidation) and 323 (Punishment for voluntarily causing hurt) of the Indian Penal Code. The Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which criminalises triple talaq, was also applied.
DCP Navnath Dhavle, Bhiwandi, said, “We have lodged a case and arrested the accused and produced him in court, which remanded him to police custody. Further investigation is under way.”
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