Chennai: The Madras high court has ordered notice on a petition which sought to end several hundred 'kangaroo courts' being run by advocates and religious heads at many mosques and ordering 'talaq'.
In the petition, Abdur Rahman, from the United Kingdom, has submitted that several hundred 'kangaroo courts' have been run by advocates and religious heads, including one on Anna Salai, to settle family and property disputes among Muslims.
The senior counsel for the petitioner, A. Sirajudeen, said they had created an impression in the mind of the Muslims that they were judicial organisation as per Islamic Sharia and advocating the Muslims to approach it to settle their disputes and an alternative to man-made courts. They granted several hundred divorces, 'talaq' and property disputes without following Sharia and regular law.
The council, which resembles like courts, has an elevated dais for the presiding officer and the presiding officer wears robes like judges, but in different colour.
The council creates an impression in the minds of local Muslims that it had been functioning in accordance with Sharia and all its orders and judgments were religiously binding upon Muslims and they were legal. Sirajudeen said, “because of illegal functioning of the council, the family systems of a number of Muslim families collapsed and hundreds of spouses suffer the ignominy of separation because of their poverty.”
