Kasaragod: A 22-year-old woman from Delampady has accused her husband, a khateeb -- the preacher who delivers Friday sermons in mosques -- of years of assault and cruelty, and finally divorcing her by pronouncing triple talaq after she failed to meet his demand for more gold. This is the second such case reported in Kasaragod district this year.

Ibrahim Badusha (31), the chief preacher at Hadad Nagar Juma Masjid at Belinja in Kumbadaje panchayat, has been booked by Adhur police under IPC Section 498A (cruelty to wife) and Sections 3 and 4 of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, which criminalises instant and irrevocable divorce.

A native of Ishwaramangala, a village 5 km from Sullia in Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district, Ibrahim Badusha studied up to Class 10 before joining an Islamic school in Kozhikode. He has been working as a khateeb for the past five years.

Ibrahim Badusha married Rafida H (22) of Adoor, Delampady, on May 18, 2023, as per Muslim customs. At the wedding, Rafida’s father, himself a khateeb, asked if Ibrahim expected dowry. “He told my father he wanted only the ‘pennu’ and not ‘pon’ -- only the girl, not gold,” Rafida told Onmanorama on August 20.

Her father, nevertheless, gave her 64 grams of gold jewellery. “But soon after the wedding, demands for more gold began,” she said. What followed, she alleged, were relentless assaults. “He finds pleasure in assaulting and abusing me. Sometimes, he finds reasons, and sometimes, without reason, he assaults me. He does not care if I fall, if blood oozes from my mouth or nose, or if I ask for water. I was assaulted during pregnancy, and again on the 40th day after giving birth to our daughter, just because I did not bring back a gold chain for her from my father’s home,” Rafida said.

Her father died of a heart attack a year and a half ago, “without knowing my suffering,” she said. “I did not tell anyone till he pronounced the triple talaq.”

The couple lived in a rented house in Belinja, close to the mosque where Ibrahim preached. On August 7, around 11.45 am, Rafida alleged, he beat, kicked, slapped, and verbally abused her before pronouncing instant triple talaq. “At that time, the call for noon prayer was heard, and he threatened to kill me if I was still in the house when he returned from the mosque,” she said.

Fearing for her life, she fled to her maternal home in Adoor, Delampady, with her two-year-old daughter. “He is a psycho. He can do it,” Rafida said

Ibrahim Badusha, the woman said, is thorough with Islamic law and also the law of the land. “Yet, he behaves like this,” Rafida said.

Talaq-e-biddat, or instant divorce by pronouncing talaq thrice, is recognised in Islamic law but discouraged within the community, as there is a prescribed procedure for divorce. Several Islamic countries have already banned the practice. In August 2017, a five-member Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court, in a 3:2 verdict, declared the practice unconstitutional, rendering it null and void.

In July 2019, the Union government anchored the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Act, 2019, criminalising triple talaq and prescribing up to three years in prison for those pronouncing it.

In March this year, Hosdurg Police in Kanhangad booked an NRI for sending a WhatsApp voice message pronouncing triple talaq to his wife -- the first such case registered in Kasaragod under the new law. In that case also, the woman, C H Nusaiba, alleged her husband, Abdul Razak of Nellikatte in Kanhangad, was demanding 400gm of gold jewellery from her family, and subjecting her to domestic abuse.