Conversion To Islam Costs Woman Share In Parental Property

What consequences does a person who changes her faith face? Well, she may lose rights in her parents' property. Recently, a 33-year-old woman who converted from Hinduism to Islam had to move the Delhi court in order to claim share in her deceased father’s property. Her brothers had disowned her and stopped giving her remuneration from the ancestral property.

Sonia converted to Islam in 2013 when she married Hassan. It was Sonia’s second marriage. Her first husband died in 2011 due to blood cancer. A year earlier than that, she lost her father. After her father’s death, Sonia’s two elder brothers decided to divide the property in Ashok Nagar among themselves and settled to pay Sonia a monthly remuneration in exchange of her share. Sonia, who had a seven-year-old daughter from her first marriage, agreed to the pact as she did not have any other way of earning livelihood.

However, when Sonia opened up about her relationship with Hassan in 2012 to her brothers, they rejected it. Hassan’s family accepted Sonia, following which Sonia changed her faith.

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"Even after my second marriage, there is no change in my living. My husband has never interfered or forced any norms upon me. We value all religions. I tried convincing my brothers, but the last time I went there, they threatened me with the dire consequence," she told Mail Today.

After her marriage, the brothers stopped her remuneration and filed to cancel her rights in the property belonging to a Hindu family as she had changed her faith.

Now Sonia has filed a petition through her counsel Amit Kumar before Additional District Judge Ravinder Singh. The case will be heard on August 26. Sonia has said in her petition that her brothers have tricked her and executed a false deed of her share in the property in their name.

"When our father and mother died in 2010 and 2008 respectively, my brothers and I became joint owners of the undivided property, worth Rs 20 lakh as on date," Sonia told the court, reported India Today.

She also alleged that in 2012, her brothers took her to the office of sub-registrar, pretending to divide the property equally among the three of them and she signed the documents in good faith, without checking.

Initially, she received her share of rent from the tenants occupying the property but as she got married with Hassan, this became infrequent and subsequently stopped.

The brothers respond to the suit, saying that she isn’t qualified anymore to inherit a share in the property under the provisions of the Hindu Succession Act as she has converted and married a Muslim man. Sonia also has a child with Hassan.

The brothers are adamant that they haven’t undertaken the fraudulent path and want dismissal of the suit as she does not have a right in her ancestral property now.

Sonia has also filed a criminal complaint against her brothers in the Karkardooma court for committing cheating, criminal conspiracy and forgery.