Hadiya rerun? U’khand man wants wife ‘freed’ from parents
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court has asked the Uttarakhand Police to produce in the court on Wednesday a 20-year-old woman who converted to Islam to marry after her husband sought her “release” from her parents’ custody, in what appears to be a rerun of the Hadiya case.
Requesting the court to reunite him with his wife, 23-year-old Mohammad Danish on Monday told a bench led by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra that he was arrested for the abduction of his wife, Aisha alias Shweta Bhist, and was lodged in the Haldwani jail since April 20. “We want to talk to the girl and know what she wants. Does she want to stay with her parents or otherwise,” CJI Misra said, ordering Aisha be in the court on Wednesday.
Danish and Aisha, who both hail from Haldwani, were pursuing bachelors in business administration in Bheemtal when they fell in love. Aisha’s parents were opposed to the relationship so they eloped and got married in Delhi on April 19 as per Islamic customs, the petition says.
Bisht took the name Aisha after converting to Islam of her own free will and they got the marriage registered in Ghaziabad, it says. Her parents lodged an abduction complaint against Danish and the Uttarakhand Police arrested the couple from Delhi the next day.
The Uttarakhand government rubbished Danish’s petition. “The marriage certificate and the nikahnama are fake and it is a case of abduction,” deputy advocate general Manoj Gorkela said.
Danish said apprehending trouble, Aisha had emailed an affidavit to inspector general of police and Nanital senior superintendent of police informing them of her marriage and conversion.
In a landmark ruling, the Supreme Court in March upheld the marriage of Hadiya, a 26-yearold Kerala woman who converted to Islam and wed a Muslim man, upholding a woman’s right to choose a partner. On her father’s petition, the Kerala HC had quashed the marriage and ordered Hadiya in her parents’ custody. A bench led by Misra, after hearing Hadiya, ruled an individual’s right to marry a person was a matter of privacy, intrinsic to right to life and state and society had no role in determining the choice.