Haq.

On December 12th, 2025, the Rani Fund hosted a screening of Haq, alongside legal partner Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. The evening brought together over 70 senior members of Delhi’s legal community, including judges, senior advocates and in-house counsel.

The purpose of the screening was to bring law, cinema and dialogue together—and to explore how storytelling can allow us to revisit socially significant moments from India’s legal history.

Haq, directed by Suparn S. Varma, is a fictionalised story inspired by the landmark 1985 Supreme Court judgment in Mohd. Ahmed Khan v. Shah Bano Begum. At the centre of both the film and the case lies a deceptively simple question: what is a woman legally entitled to after the breakdown of a marriage?

Shah Bano had been married for more than four decades when her husband divorced her. Unable to support herself, she sought maintenance under Section 125 of the Code of Criminal Procedure—a secular provision designed to prevent people without sufficient means from being left destitute.

Her husband's argument was that his obligations were governed by Muslim personal law and had been fulfilled following the divorce. In 1985, the Supreme Court ruled in Shah Bano's favour, holding that Section 125 applied irrespective of religion.

What began as a maintenance claim consequently became a much larger national debate: when personal law and secular law intersect, how should the rights of the individual be protected?

The political response was equally consequential. Parliament subsequently passed the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986, changing the legal framework governing maintenance for divorced Muslim women. Its interpretation would itself return to the Supreme Court years later.

This history is what gives Haq its weight. The film does not simply dramatise a courtroom battle. It asks us to consider the relationship between law, religion, gender and power—and the very real person who can sit at the intersection of all four.

It also demonstrates why landmark cases matter beyond the judgments we study. Law is constantly being shaped by people who challenge the circumstances they find themselves in. Behind legal principles and constitutional debates are often individuals asking the courts for something fundamental: dignity, protection, or equality. 

For the Rani Fund, the screening offered an opportunity to revisit that history with people who work within the law today—and to consider how far the conversation around women's legal rights has travelled since Shah Bano first approached the courts.