Her Husband Married A Eunuch, Then Got A Third Wife. Finally Pronounced Triple Talaq. Will Sabiya Begum Get Justice?

The eldest of Sabiya Begum’s four daughters had been married when her husband Mohammed Aaftab Saifi brought a eunuch home.

The eunuch occupied the ground floor while Sabiya, along with her five other children including three daughters, shifted to the first floor. Her husband would come upstairs only for meals.

By this time, Sabiya had become used to her husband’s womanising ways, but this new relationship brought her shame, she says.

Sabiya took matters in her own hands and approached the ‘sardar’ of the group to which the eunuch belonged. The chief got the person to break up with Aaftab and shift to another area.

An angry Aaftab got Sabiya and the children to move to his other house, located a few hundred metre away, while he entered into a third nikah. To Sabiya’s relief, her third co-wife was a woman. She was ten years older than her.

For seven years now, Sabiya and her children have been living separately from Aaftab. In this time, she got two more daughters married.

Sabiya, who is now 52, lives with the fourth daughter, who studies in an English-medium government-run school, and two sons — both of whom are undergraduate students at Jamia Milia Islamia, a government-funded University in New Delhi with half the seats reserved for the Muslim community.

In July, Aaftab unilaterally divorced Sabiya by pronouncing the word ‘talaq’ thrice in a go. He then asked her to leave his house. When she refused, he beat her up.

In the weeks preceding this talaq, Sabiya had called up Aaftab several times asking money for house expenses.

Aaftab works as a property dealer. He operates from a particularly cramped colony of northeast Delhi, a district that has the highest population density in the country.

Sabiya says he makes good money, “sometimes more than a lakh a month”.

Fearing eviction, Sabiya went to the police. She gave a complaint to the nearest Bhajanpura police station alleging domestic violence, neglect and divorce through the unlawful practice of ‘triple talaq’ from her husband. The police however did not covert the complaint into a case.

“The policemen told me it was a domestic matter and I should resolve it at home,” says Sabiya.

She came in contact with a lawyer through her brother, and managed to take a court order for a first information report (FIR) to be filed.

The FIR was finally filed last week (FIR number 128/2023 filed at Bhajanpura police station on 1 March).

Only the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which penalises Talaq-e-Biddat (or Triple Talaq), has been invoked against Aaftab.

Police have not arrested him yet. Sabiya says Aaftab is not absconding, but is staying at the other house “as if the police case against him does not exist at all”.

Sabiya says she wants her husband arrested and jailed “so he might come into his senses”, and wants to get a direction from court that he pays her maintenance every month.

“I have a daughter and two sons to get married,” she says.

Sabiya does not want to reinstate her marriage. Despite the Indian law pronouncing instant talaq as invalid, she believes she is divorced.

She also does not care about her marriage anymore, having seen her husband with one woman after another, besides a eunuch, for a long 32 years.

A visit to Sabiya’s house

The three-storey house is in the name of Aaftab. Sabiya has rented the ground portion to a family while she lives on the first floor.

Besides Sabiya, her school-going daughter and a college-going son are at home.

Sabiya’s father died when she was a child, leaving her mother to raise her and her siblings by herself, with only her skills at stitching clothes to bank upon. Sabiya was married when she was around 20.

Aaftab Saifi was ten years older than her, belonged to her caste and worked as an autorickshaw driver.

Sabiya found that he hardly stayed at home and would remain out of the house even in the night. He would never reveal his whereabouts to her, and physically assaulted her in the first week of their marriage.

Sabiya knew she had entered into a loveless relationship with a womaniser. Luckily for her, she got along well with her parents-in-law.

Aaftab would bring his women friends at home. Sabiya was made to serve them snacks and meals.  

Sabiya went on to have three daughters in a row, which worsened her situation.

“He began beating me up every other day, citing my inability to produce sons. He began threatening me that he would remarry,” says Sabiya.

Sabiya then gave birth to two sons in a row, but that did nothing to improve her marriage. Her husband continued to bring women home or spend the nights outside, and continued to assault her over trivial matters.

After her sixth child, a daughter, was born, Aaftab began living on the ground floor with the eunuch. Sabiya’s parents-in-law, and also her mother, had passed away by then.

Sabiya’s statement recorded in the FIR mentions this relationship. The statement says,

“My husband is a crook and a criminal sort of man. He married a Hijra and did unlawful acts with him. I used societal pressure to end that relationship. Then my husband married a woman against my wishes and started living separately from me".

He visits me and my children occasionally and each time, he abuses us. He never gives me any money for house expenses or my children’s education. My life has become hell. He threatens me to sell me off in a red-light area".

“On 30 June 2022, he told me to evict his house in a week. On 7 July 2022, he entered the house around 7 am and said ‘talaq talaq talaq’ and again asked me to pack up and leave".

Since then, I have been facing threat to my safety and life. The Bhajanpura police did not file a case on my complaint. You [magistrate at Karkardooma court) are requested to direct the police to file an FIR”.

Asked about her experience with the police, Sabiya says she was surprised that the police did not find merit in her complaint against her husband. She was made to go to a Mahila Thana.

“Cops at Mahila Thana called my complaint a trivial family dispute. They made me sign on a blank paper, saying it would be used for an out-of-court settlement”.

Now that an FIR has been filed on direction of the court, Sabiya is again disappointed.

“I don’t understand why my husband is not facing repercussions of his actions at all. Is he not entitled to give money to me and my children? He keeps threatening us to leave his house. Are we not entitled to get any share in his property at all?” Sabiya asks.

Asked how she has sustained herself over the years without much help from her husband, Sabiya credits her daughters.

Her first daughter, a graduate in Humanities from Jamia, began teaching children in the colony, drawing some income.

Her second daughter, who pursued a B.Ed course in Special Education from Delhi University after her graduation from Jamia, earned handsomely.

“She got employed as a tutor in some rich families for their children, who needed special attention. They would pay really well. This is how my daughter helped our situation. Most of the things you see in the house, like the fridge and bed, were bought by her income”.

She says that all her three daughters have married into families of Syed or Pathan castes, which are considered higher in status than Saifis.

“You cannot call those love marriages as it was the boys’ families that asked for my daughters in marriage,” says Sabiya.

“My second daughter is in Turkey, married to a Syed,” she says. “Others are in Delhi”.

Sabiya’s youngest daughter, who is listening to the entire conversation, says all her siblings support their mother and have no love lost for their father.

“My father would touch even us inappropriately. He would hold my hand in an awkward manner,” she says, and adds, “If it comes to that, I am willing to tell the police”.

Her elder brother, who is at home but stays in a different room throughout, the door shut, sends a message through his sister to not publish the faces of his parents in the report.

The sister says, “You know, he is taking a course in Korean and Chinese languages. He wants to go abroad”.

Sabiya beams. “By God’s grace, all my children are educated and well-behaved. None of them have taken after their father”.

While Sabiya draws a sense of security from her grown-up sons who are fortunately in her favour, the question remains: After a long 32 years of her marriage, does Sabiya stand to get nothing from her marriage except the responsibility of her children?