It’s bad enough when your family, neighbours and relatives keep sighing and bemoaning your ‘dark skin’, wondering ‘how you’ll ever get married’. But when your own husband uses that as a reason to divorce you, it’s heartbreaking.
A 26-year-old woman from Noida filed a police complaint against her husband of four months, on Tuesday, after he sent her a talaq over email, alleging he had done so because she was dark-skinned. The talaq, she claimed, came three days after she told him she was pregnant, on December 5th, reported the Times of India.
Sana Yasmin (name changed), who works as a research assistant at a Noida-based pharma firm, said her husband, a software engineer aged around 35, had humiliated her for the colour of her skin from the first day of marriage, and that he had made plain to her his preference for a `fair-skinned’ bride.
The families came into contact through a wedding portal in March and the wedding happened in Jamshedpur, Sana’s home town. They then moved to Bangalore, where her husband is based. “From the start, he was indifferent to me and, on several occasions, verbally abused and slapped me,” Sana said.
In November, she moved back to Noida to re-join work. “His family saw me before marriage. If he had a problem with the colour of my skin, he should have refused to marry me,” she said. Unlike Sana’s husband, her father-in-law did not contest her claims. “The decision might have been taken in a fit of rage. I will urge him to reconsider,” he said. But his son said he would not reconsider and was ready for a legal battle if that was what Sana wanted.
Narendree Saini, SHO of the women’s police station in Sector 39, said Sana had visited them on Sunday . “We contacted her husband and asked for a meeting. He refused to come to Noida. She had also not decided where to register a complaint,” she said. “We will register a dowry harassment case when we receive the complaint.”
