'Want to be with my husband': Woman at the heart of love jihad case

Kerala woman Hadiya, who has to depose before the Supreme Court on November 27 in an alleged ‘love jihad’ case, on Saturday said 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 mediapersons, 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 head scarf, 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 Kottayam 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 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 A M Khanwilkar and D Y 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.

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 K M Ashokan, claimed that Jahan was a radicalised man and several organisations like Popular Front of India were involved in 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 State’s mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.

Jahan had on September 20 approached the apex court seeking recall of its August 16 order, directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case of conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman with him.

Meanwhile, the Kerala government on October 7 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 National Investigation Agency.

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.