I want my freedom.... I want to live true to my faith.... I want to be with my husband.”
Barely five feet tall, dressed in a red-and-white salwar suit and her head covered in a red scarf, 25-year-old Akhila Asokan, alias Hadiya, spoke loud and clear before a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court on November 27. The judges—Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices A.M. Khanwilkar and D.Y. Chandrachud—had, on October 30, asked Hadiya’s father to present her before the court to hear her version before it examined the Kerala High Court’s annulment of her marriage to 26-year-old Shafin Jahan, alias Chikku.
The High Court had annulled the marriage after her father, K.M. Asokan, filed a petition claiming his daughter was a victim of ‘love jihad’ or forced religious conversion. Shafin challenged the annulment in the Supreme Court, which directed the National Investigation Agency to investigate the matter.
The probe that ensued brought further clouds of suspicion over the marriage. It showed that the freedom Hadiya referred to not only involved the complications of an inter-religion marriage, but much more.
The NIA investigation found that Shafin’s parents also had an inter-religion marriage. His father, Shajahan, is a convert to Islam from Hinduism and mother, Rejula, is a Muslim. In 2014, his parents separated because of a family dispute. Following this, Shafin left for Muscat, Oman, on January 1, 2015, where he worked as administrative secretary at Muttrah Pharmacy LLC.
Shafin returned to Kerala on November 22, 2016, to get married. He wanted to return to Muscat with his wife and a new job visa. A few months later, the High Court annulled the marriage.
Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, appearing for the NIA, told the Supreme Court that Hadiya’s was a case of indoctrination. “It is psychological kidnapping and brainwashing,” he said.
He said the NIA had made an extremely critical finding that demolished the case for their marriage. “The petitioner has said that he reached her through a website called waytonikah.com, which is a false claim,’’ he said. The couple have claimed their nikah was solemnised on December 19, 2016. But, the NIA’s probe found that the profiles of both Shafin Jahan and Akhila had neither been viewed nor visited by each other till December 31, 2016, as per the website’s service providers.
According to the NIA, Shafin was an active member of the Social Democratic Party of India, which is the political wing of the islamist organisation the Popular Front of India. According to investigators, Shafin’s marriage proposal to Hadiya came through Muneer, another activist of the SDPI, in August 2016. The NIA also alleged that Shafin had been involved in four criminal cases, three of them political.
He was also an active member of the Facebook group ‘SDPI Kerala’ and a closed Facebook group ‘Thanal’. It is through Thanal, claims the NIA, that Shafin got in touch with a Manseed Muhammed. In a charge-sheet filed in March 2017, the NIA alleged that Manseed was part of an Islamic State-inspired gang which made preparations to attack several prominent persons in south India.
The Kerala police had earlier found that though Manseed and Shafin knew each other, they had never met. “Is the NIA contradicting the findings of the Kerala Police?’’ asked Shafin’s counsel Haris Beeran. “The NIA report is still in a sealed cover before the Supreme Court. But, had the agency found any incriminating evidence against Shafin, they would have arrested him by now. Why is the NIA spreading false claims? As far as the cases against Shafin are concerned, they only related to political violence on the campus and have been dropped.” Beeran said Shafin has been questioned by the NIA for more than ten hours over three days. The week before, he was quizzed for nearly six hours in Kochi. And, he was not complaining.
NIA investigators said Hadiya was a strong-willed girl and that she told them that she had neither been brainwashed nor forced into conversion.
On November 27, she reached the Supreme Court premises, flanked by her parents and surrounded by five police personnel. She had to wait before she was heard. The communally sensitive case had the bench wondering whether it should first examine if she was ‘indoctrinated’, or if she was deciding independently.
Her mother, Ponnamma, wept through the hearing, while her father listened intently. Through the three-hour-long hearing, Shafin stood in the visitors’ gallery, displaying no emotion.
Senior lawyer Shyam Divan, appearing for Asokan, pleaded for an in-camera hearing, citing the privacy of the family and the communally sensitive nature of the case. But, senior lawyer Kapil Sibal, counsel for Shafin, said it was in national interest that the woman be heard in open court. “The country must know... We have had no access to her,” he said. Sibal insisted that the court look into her right to decide what she wanted to do in life. Justices Misra and Chandrachud said that a case of this nature had not come to them earlier.
Hadiya eventually got to speak and repeatedly said she wanted to be true to her faith, which she apprehended would not be accepted by her parents. The word “vishwas”, meaning faith, was a leitmotif in her answers. She told the court that she did not want to be in the “illegal custody” of her parents. She wanted to be with her husband. After Hadiya spoke her heart out, the judges limited their questions to asking her what she wanted to do for a living, cautious not to query her on conversion. Finally, the Court passed an order freeing her from her parents’ custody, directing that the homoeopathic student be taken to the medical college in Salem, Tamil Nadu, to complete her internship.
Shafin is satisfied. “The primary justice has to be done to Hadiya; Shafin comes later,” said Beeran. “We are happy that the Supreme Court has restored her individual liberty, which was under serious threat. They have also secured her future by sending her back to her books.”
Asokan’s legal team feels that the order is a fair one. “It focuses on Hadiya pursuing her education and states that the investigation would continue,” said lawyer Madhavi Divan. A. Raghunath, a lawyer on the team, said that Hadiya had “no husband since her marriage has already been annulled by the Kerala High Court”. Said Raghunath: “We hope she finds an excellent person to marry once she completes her education. Our primary objective is to ensure Hadiya’s safety and today we feel she is happy and safe in her college.”
Hadiya reached her college in Salem on the evening of November 28, but there was a lack of clarity about whether she would be permitted to meet Shafin. The principal of the college first stated that she would be allowed to see only her parents, but after reading the court order agreed to allow her to meet anybody she wanted.
