The Central government may soon bring in a law to ban instant triple talaq, or talaq-e-biddat, during the Winter Session of the Parliament, The Indian Express reported. “The government is contemplating making talaq-e-biddat a criminal offence,” a senior government official said on Tuesday.

The official added that a committee of ministers comprising Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad and Minority Affairs Minister Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi, had been formed to fine-tune the legislation.

The government felt the need to bring in a new legislation because of repeated reports about people practising triple talaq despite the government’s advisories and the Supreme Court ban. On November 13, a woman had alleged that her husband, a professor at the Aligarh Muslim University, told her over WhatsApp that he was divorcing her.

The Supreme Court had on August 22 struck down triple talaq, calling the Islamic practice unconstitutional and in violation of Article 14 of the Indian Constitution, which provides for equality before the law.

Triple talaq is a practice by which Muslim men are allowed to instantly divorce their wives by simply pronouncing “talaq”, meaning divorce, three times.