Kerala love jihad case: Ahead of SC hearing, Hadiya says, 'I am a Muslim and want to live with my husband'

Kottayam: Kerala woman Hadiya, who has to depose before the Supreme Court on 27 November in an alleged ’love jihad’ case, said on Saturday that she wanted to be with her husband, as she was whisked away by her parents and security personnel to board a flight to Delhi. Chaotic scenes prevailed as media persons, who tried to approach her, jostled with the policemen after she reached the airport in Nedumbassery amid tight security. “I am a Muslim. I was not forced. I want to be with my husband,” the 25-year-old woman, wearing a headscarf, shouted as she was being taken inside the airport. Earlier, the woman, who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man Shafin Jahan, and her parents left from their house in a village near Vaikom in this district, accompanied by a police team which also comprised women personnel, for a two-hour long journey to the airport. The direction by the apex court for producing the woman for an interaction came amid an assertion by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) that this was a case in which the woman was indoctrinated and she may be incapable of giving free consent to marriage. A Supreme Court bench, comprising Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud, had asked senior advocate Shyam Divan, representing the father of the woman, to ensure she is produced before them to ascertain whether she had married of her own volition. [caption id=“attachment_4179247” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  File image of Hadiya. Image courtesy: Firstpost Hindi[/caption] The woman and her parents are likely to stay at Kerala House in New Delhi, sources said. The NIA, represented by Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, had said there was a well-oiled machinery working in Kerala that was indoctrinating and radicalising society in the state. As many as 89 cases of similar nature have been reported from the southern state, the ASG had said. Divan, appearing for woman’s father KM Ashokan, claimed that Jahan was a radicalised man and several organisations like Popular Front of India were involved in the radicalisation of society. Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, counsel for Shafin Jahan, had opposed NIA’s submission and that of the woman’s father. Hadiya, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan. It was alleged that she was recruited by Islamic States’ mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge. Jahan had on 20 September approached the apex court seeking a recall of its 16 August order, directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case of conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman with him. Meanwhile, the Kerala government on 7 October told the Supreme Court that its police conducted a “thorough investigation” into her conversion and subsequent marriage to Jahan and did not find material warranting the transfer of probe to the NIA. Jahan had moved the Supreme Court after the Kerala high court annulled his marriage, saying it was an insult to the independence of women in the country.