Woman falsely accused

Press, 24 June 1985, Page 6

Woman falsely accused

NZPA-AP New Delhi A 46-year-old Muslim woman has won her battle against a village mosque council that had ordered her to receive 101 lashes and shave her head as punishment for alleged adultery and drinking liquor. The punishment, ordered on April 18 for Suleikha Beevi, in the southern state of Kerala, aroused a public furor. State officials declared that India’s legal code took precedence over Islamic law handed down by village elders and the council, called the Jamaat Committee, said on Friday that it was convinced the charges against the woman, a mother of children, were baseless.

Her husband also had appealed to the elders to drop the charges, which he called false and malicious.

Ms Beevi, who uses her maiden name according to rural Indian practice, had refused to appear before the council and undergo punishment. She also had served a legal notice on the Beema Palla Village Council, demanding a public apology and threatening to sue for defamation of character.

In response, the council sent a van with loudspeakers around the village, announcing that the Muslim community was forbidden from talking to her and her family. The state Government then posted a police guard

outside the woman’s house to protect her. Although the mosque councils in India’s Muslim villages have no legal authority, people generally obey them. Before the council changed its mind on Saturday, the state Government was examining the case for possible prosecution on charges that the elders had usurped state authority. Abdul Wahid, Ms Beevi’s husband, said that the charges against his wife were “baseless and fabricated”.

He had been working in Abu Dhabi, one of the United Arab Emirates, but came home to help defend his wife. Mr Wahid said that some

people who disliked his family had extracted a false statement from a man accusing his wife of adultery.

About 12 per cent of India’s 750 million people are Muslim. The majority of the population is Hindu. India has no official religion, and Islamic law recently came under attack from the Supreme Court. In a ruling on April 23 it angered the Muslim community by declaring that a Muslim man must pay alimony to his divorced wife.

The ruling said that Indian law took precedence over the Muslim code, which allows men to have four wives and prohibits alimony.