What is halala, and is it a genuine requirement or a misused practice?

Halala (more precisely, tahlil) refers to the condition, described in Q8, that after a woman has been given the third and final talaq by her husband, she cannot remarry him unless she has first genuinely married another man, that marriage has been consummated, and it has ended naturally — not one arranged in advance for the specific purpose of making her lawful again for her first husband. Genuine halala is simply an incidental consequence of a real second marriage that happened to end; it is not something anyone is supposed to plan or arrange as a transaction.

The widely reported and condemned practice — where a family arranges a short, sham marriage with a hired "muhallil" solely to complete the technical requirement, often with the understanding that it will be dissolved right after — is explicitly and strongly prohibited. An authentic hadith reported across major hadith collections records the Prophet ﷺ cursing "the muhallil and the one for whom halala is arranged," making clear that this engineered version of the practice has no religious legitimacy despite sometimes being misrepresented as an Islamic requirement. It's also worth noting for Indian readers that since instant triple talaq is now void under the 2019 Act, the situation that traditionally triggers a genuine need for halala — an actual, completed third and final talaq — should not legally arise through the instant-triple-talaq route at all going forward.

Source: general Sunni fiqh on tahlil/nikah halala; hadith condemning arranged halala (muhallil), reported across Sunan Abu Dawud, Sunan Ibn Majah, and Jami' al-Tirmidhi — consult a scholar for the precise chain and wording before citing a specific number.