After reaching the friend’s house, the woman was made to swallow more tablets following which she passed out. (Representative image) (Reuters)

A Muslim man from Jaipur drugged his wife and forced her to sleep with a friend under the pretence of following nikah halala. The 42-year old victim filed a complaint on charges of rape. The nikah halala, according to Muslim Personal laws, dictates that a woman must consummate her marriage with another man if she wants to go back to her former husband, with whom she has been divorced. The victim told HT, that she could not get over the insult and shame that was meted out on her. She expressed her anger and said that her husband had her raped by his friend. “I feel angry, depressed, scared”, she cried.

The woman informed that her husband is also her cousin and had divorced her some 8 months ago. They had been married for 25 years before that. The couple also happens to have two grown up sons. The woman further informs that her husband used to insist her to sleep with his friends despite her refusing repeatedly. She talks about their divorce and says that her denial angered him one day and he gave her a ‘triple talaq’. where this gets interesting though that he still lived with her and had physical relations. “So why the need for halala?”, the woman asks. She talks about the day she was raped and says that her husband took her to his friend’s house for a drive and then drugged her with tablets. After reaching the friend’s house, she was made to swallow more tablets following which she passed out. She says that the next thing she remembered was waking up naked to his friend.

The husband then came into the room as she shouted and warned her not to fuss over it. When the woman went to a police station and the Muslim civil rights campaigners’ to report the case, he showed her a video clip of her in compromising position with his friend. The victim, though, did not pay any attention to these threats and immediately lodged a case of rape and cheating against him and his friend. Even Mohammed Iqbal of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind, a part of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board, which is opposing the Uniform Civil Code agreed that since she was not married to the man, it was a case of rape must be punished.