Talaq is the subject of a dispute between the theatre staging the production and the National Arts Council (NAC) over whether Muslim men should sit on a panel to decide if a play about oppressed Muslim women should receive a public performance licence.

In a report to Singapore's police, the playwright Elangovan said the death threat was delivered to his home by two men, one wearing traditional Indian Muslim dress.

They threatened to cut off his head on Oct 26, when the Indian community celebrates Deepavali - the festival of light centred on the triumph of good over evil.

"You got no right to write about Indian Muslim women," the typed threat said in broken English. "Now you know we come right to your house. If you don't want to stop putting Talaq we going to come again. This time we going to kill you. We going to cut your head and throw your dirty head into Hindu temple on Deepavali day."

Elangovan said he had death threats by mail last year in 1998, when the play ran in the Tamil language, but this was the first time he had been accosted at home.

No licence has yet been issued for the English version of Talaq as the Agni Kootthi theatre and the NAC debate composition of the preview panel. A performance due to be staged on Oct 16 was called off by the theatre president, Somasundram Thenmoli, who objected to two representatives of the all-male South Indian Jamiathual Ulama (SIJU) organisation being included on the NAC panel.

Nigel Sim of the NAC said the SIJU members were included because "their sensitivities were relevant to the evaluation process".

Talaq is based on real-life accounts of Indian Muslim women in Singapore and explores oppression, marital violence and rape, and the enforced culture of silence perpetrated by their families.