Malaysian religious authorities probe viral claim of woman having ‘2 husbands’
The allegation has renewed focus on cross-border marriages between Malaysia and southern Thailand that are used to bypass domestic approvals
The controversy erupted on Thursday when a woman who identified herself as Ekin Derahim alleged on Facebook that her brother’s wife had secretly married a second man in Songkhla, Thailand, more than a year earlier without the family’s knowledge.
She alleged that after the marriage in Thailand, her sister-in-law had alternated between two homes about 19 km (12 miles) apart in Kelantan while her brother was at work, and that the family only discovered the alleged second marriage on December 6.
“If we and the villagers had not caught her at the other man’s house, we would never have known how long she planned to deceive us,” Ekin wrote in the post, which was shared thousands of times.
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The allegation has struck a nerve as it touches on complex Malaysian religious edicts on multiple marriages and the workaround of crossing into Thailand to hide unsanctioned second nuptials or divorces.