Patna: The incompetence of the district machinery to stop the non-stop noise pollution by a local temple, has forced a young woman to seek a divorce in Bihar’s Vaishali district. Interestingly, the paper also reported that instead of addressing the core complaint, the police officials allegedly ‘declared’ the woman ‘mentally challenged’ and advised her in-laws to send her elsewhere.

According to a local daily, a young married Hindu woman has sought divorce from her husband for his ‘failure to stop loudspeakers’ blaring round the clock from a temple near his home in Hajipur, around 20km north of Patna.

Sneha Singh, from Uttar Pradesh, married to Rakesh , a resident of the Rajputana locality of Hajipur, the district headquarters of Vaishali, said  she had no option left, but to approach the local court for divorce from her husband, after four years marriage due to his inability to curb noise pollution.

Sneha, a postgraduate law degree holder from an Uttar Pradesh institute, said that her husband, a former badminton player, failed to keep the pledge he took at the time of their marriage. “Rakesh has not kept his promise that he made during the wedding,” she told the newspaper.

In her repeated complaints to the police,she has stated that some ‘anti-social elements’  have installed loudspeakers near a temple close to her residence and played religious songs at high volumes round the clock.

“I have developed serious complications due to blaring of loudspeakers at high decibel 24×7,” she added. Her says that repeated requests – to the local police, the national human rights commission, and even the offices of the chief minister and the prime minister – have fallen on deaf ears.

“The temple near my house keeps on blaring several loudspeakers round the clock at high decibel making our life a hell,” she rued. “It is worthless to live with a man who can’t protect the dignity of his wife. So I have decided to get rid of this man and his family as he has expressed his helplessness to support me in the fight for justice. My life has turned into a hell due to noise pollution. I can’t live in such an environment,” she said.

Sneha said the problem started soon after she came to her in-laws’ after marriage to live with her husband, father-in-law and mother in-law, but for two years she remained silent.

“In March last year, I drew the attention of the local authorities, including the district magistrate (DM) and the superintendent of police (SP), towards the problem but to no avail,” she said.

She said a mob pelted her in-laws’ house was with stones after she lodged a formal complaint with the Industrial police station last year. She said the mob even tried to kill her.

“The police came after repeated calls to the offices and residences of the DM and the SP,” she said.

The police officials declared Sneha as mentally challenged and advised her father-in-law to send her elsewhere if he wanted to live in the locality. “It is torturous to call an educated woman like me mentally challenged. I have done LLM, LLB and obtained other academic degrees from reputable institutes. Though my in-laws’ have succumbed to the pressure of the anti-socials, I certainly will not, and will keep on fighting with them,” Sneha said.

She cited the text and WhatsApp messages she sent to the authorities concerned to express her agony and pain that she had to undergo for the past four years. She said she decided to snap all ties with her in-laws because she was fed up with the reluctant attitude of the officials. “If the authorities can’t give right to live with dignity, let them give the right to die,” she said.

Certain pro-active RSS backed groups have been making a huge issue about Mosques ‘disturbing the peace’ with the five minutes ‘Azan’ call relayed over loudspeakers, isn’t it time that they also address the same problem’ high decibel noise pollution through loudspeakers  in the name of jagrans and other rituals that disturb the peace and sleep of people residing near temples as well?