Muslim man can have many wives if all treated equally: Allahabad High Court

Lucknow: In a significant observation, the Allahabad High Court has said that a Muslim man can have more than one wife only when there is a valid reason for entering into multiple marriages and he treats all of them equally.

A single bench comprising Justice Arun Kumar Singh Deshwal made the observation while hearing a petition filed by one Furqan, who had sought quashing of the charge-sheet and summons issued by a district court in Moradabad in Uttar Pradesh after his second wife lodged a case accusing him of hiding his first marriage while marrying her and raping her during the course of the relationship.

‘’From the perusal of several provisions of Muslim law it is clear that Islam permits more than one marriage only under certain circumstances and with certain conditions, but this permission is widely misused even against the mandate of Muslim law as mentioned in the Quran,’’ the court said in its judgement delivered recently.

‘’The Quran allows polygamy for a fair reason, but men use that provision today for a selfish purpose. Polygamy finds mention in the Quran only once, and it is about conditional polygamy. There is a historical reason why the Quran allows polygamy. There was a time in history when a large number of women were widowed, and children were orphaned in primitive tribal tussles in Arabs. The Muslims suffered heavy casualties in defending the nascent Islamic community in Medina. It was under such circumstances that the Quran allowed conditional polygamy to protect orphans and their mothers from exploitation,’’ it said further.

‘’Quran asks men first consider taking care of the orphans and only when they think they may not be able to do justice to the orphans’ interests while staying in isolation, should they consider marrying their widowed mothers, on the condition that the new family would be dealt with justly on par with the existing one’’, the court said.

‘’It is also clear that as per the Mohammedan law, a Muslim male has no unfettered right to get a second marriage unless he has the capacity to give equal treatment to all wives,’’ it said..

The court said that from the perusal of the statement of the opposite party no. 2 (second wife), it is clear that she admitted that the petitioner had contracted second marriage with her and both are Muslims, therefore, second marriage is valid, and therefore offence u/s 376 I.P.C. as well as 495/120-B I.P.C. are not made out against the applicant.

The court said that the suggestion made in Smt. Sarla Mudgal (supra), Lily Thomas (supra) and Jafar Abbas Rasool Mohammad Merchant (supra) regarding enactment of Uniform Civil Code in pursuance of mandate of Article 44 of the Constitution of India needs to be considered by the legislature.