Wear burqa or your father, brother go to jail: Taliban tells women

Kabul: Taliban issued an order mandating women to cover faces in public, and failing to do so will invite dismissal of her father or closest male relative from government jobs or jailed, IANS reported citing media reports.

The order was issued by Taliban's supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada and the same was announced in a statement read before the media by the spokesperson for the Ministry for Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.

The statement detailed the ministry's procedures to monitor whether mandatory hijab was followed.

Khaama news reported that the first stage in the criminal proceedings against the 'crime' is to locate the residences of the girl, who came into public without a hijab, to warn her parents. Then her father or guardian will be summoned to the relevant department, and after that, a case will be registered against her father or parents, and a trial will be initiated.

The statement proposes 'Chadari', the all-covering blue burqa, as the ideal covering. The Chadari had become the symbol of the Taliban during its last rule from 1996 to 2001.

Further, the statement suggests women stay at home if no important work is outside.

However, the new rule has sparked widespread criticism on social media from the Afghan as well as the international community, saying that it is an advancement in rising restrictions on women in public.