NEW DELHI: Examining a non-believer Muslim’s plea for equitably division of property as per secular Indian Succession Act, the Supreme Court on Tuesday said if the court allowed such a plea, then it must apply to all citizens professing different faiths, an eventuality that could see enforcement of uniform succession law in the country.
AS solicitor general Tushar Mehta said this is an important issue, a bench of CJI Sanjiv Khanna, and Justices Sanjay Kumar and K V Viswanathan said “If we decide to allow such a plea, then it has to apply to all persons across faiths.”
“Under the Hindu law, children of a person converting from Hinduism to another religion are barred from inheriting property from any of their Hindu relatives. If we allow the plea of Muslim non-believers to be governed by secular Indian Succession Act, then such categories of persons in all other faiths must also get the same benefit,” the bench said.
The SG said under Section 14 and 15 of the Hindu Succession Act, a woman is the absolute owner of her share of property, and she can bequeath it to anyone through a Will. The CJI-led bench asked the Union govt to file a comprehensive affidavit dealing with various aspects of law arising in the case.
The petition filed by social activist Sufiya P M, who is also general secretary NGO ‘Ex-Muslims of Kerala’, said, “the practices under Sharia law are highly discriminatory towards Muslim women and hence it violates the fundamental Rights guaranteed under the Constitution. The main reason why the Petitioner is not following the tenets of Islam is the discriminatory practices of Sharia law, against women. It will be a failure of justice if the Petitioner is to be governed by Sharia law, even if she officially leaves the religion.”
She said as per Sharia law, a person who leaves Islam would be ousted from her community and not entitled to any inheritance right of her parental property. Her counsel Prashant Padmanabhan told the court that she has a brother who suffers from down syndrome and that if she left her religion, her daughter would not get her property.
He said as per Sharia, a daughter gets half of the share of what the sons inherit from the father. Thus, in this case, her brother would get two-thirds of her father’s property and she just one-third, even though she and her father are taking care of her brother.
If anything happened to the son, then the father’s property would not go to the petitioner or her daughter but to some relative of the father as per Sharia law. “There is no authority where my father can go and get a declaration that he is a non-believer Muslim and would like to give effect to an equitable succession through ISA,” she said.
The petitioner has sought a declaration that the persons who do not want to be governed by the Muslim personal law must be allowed to be governed by the secular Indian Succession Act, 1925 both in the case of intestate and testamentary succession.
