An Indian-origin Muslim woman in South Africa has been ordered by a court to return jewellery worth over USD 24,000 (3,50,000 rands) to her former husband's family after a ten-year-long legal battle.
The couple, who cannot be named as per South African divorce law, were together for less than a fortnight before the wife returned to her parents.
They were divorced by the Islamic rite of talaq two years later, but the woman, then 20, refused to return the 29 pieces of jewellery.
A number of them were passed down for several generations after originally being brought into the country from India by the first immigrants in her husband's family.
At the end of the acrimonious court case, Judge Jacqui Henriques had to decide on the argument put forward by Islamic jurists.
They argued that in the Hanafi School of Thought in Islam, to which both parties belonged, such a process was a tradition which made the bride the custodian of the jewellery, and not the owner, as it was intended that she pass it on to her own future daughter or daughter-in-law.
The matter went to court after a mediator failed to get the woman's father to return the items.
"I am satisfied that the jewellery was handed over (in custody to the bride) and the family are entitled to get it back," the judge ruled.
Amid uncertainly on whether the items were still in the possession of the woman or her father, the judge ordered that they pay the groom's family the cash value of the items.
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