RAJ HC SENDS ITS ‘HADIYA’ TO SHELTER
JODHPUR: The Rajasthan high court sent a 22-year-old woman to a government home for a week on Wednesday and raised questions about her conversion and interfaith marriage, a virtual re-run of a similar case in Kerala that sparked a nationwide controversy.
The court asked the state government if there was any law or procedure in Rajasthan that governed religious conversions, and observed that people couldn’t change their religions based on an affidavit. The state currently doesn’t have an anti-conversion law and has four days to respond to the court. The next date of hearing in the case is November 7, when the woman, Payal Singhvi, now known as Aarifa, will be produced in court.
“We are of the opinion that whether without any procedure or rule, a person can convert to another religion or not is not established and needs to be settled,” a bench of justices Gopal Krishna Vyas and Manoj Kumar Garg said.
The bench is hearing a petition by Singhvi’s brother, Chirag, who alleges the conversion was coerced by blackmail and that her marriage papers are forged.
Chirag’s lawyer Gokulesh Bohra argued the woman was with her family till October 25, while the marriage documents were issued in April.
The court raised doubts about Singhvi’s wedding to a Muslim man, saying the documents produced in support, including a nikahnama (Islamic marriage certificate), were contradictory in nature.
The HC said it felt investigation was needed to ascertain the authenticity of the documents and forbade anyone from meeting the woman at the government home.
The bench also expressed anger over the “negligence” of the police, which allegedly refused to file an FIR on Singhvi’s family’s complaint.
The bench questioned how police could assume the girl’s conversion was legal “just by way of an affidavit over a stamp paper of Rs 10”, when there was no provision in law in this regard.
“By this way, tomorrow, even I could address myself as Gopal Mohammad,” justice Gopal Krishna Vyas said.
This case is likely to stoke a raging row over interfaith marriage and conversion.
In May this year, the Kerala high court annulled the marriage of 24-year-old Hadiya, earlier known as Akhila, to Shafin Jehan after her father alleged that her conversion was part of a larger racket to recruit terrorist operatives.
The Supreme Court raised questions about the high court order and has summoned Hadiya, a doctor, on November 27.
Activists have repeatedly alleged that Hadiya was being tortured at her father’s home and that her fundamental right to religion was being violated.
In the Rajasthan case, Singhvi told the court that she married a Muslim man on April 14 and produced a nikahnama documenting her conversion and marriage.
She appeared in a veil on Wednesday and told the court that she was present on her own will without any threat or inducement.
Police said Singhvi wrote to the police commissioner to say she converted to Islam and married a man of her choice. Police also told the court that she had attached a copy of her nikahnama with the letter.
But the petitioner’s counsel argued religious conversion was impossible without a law. In his petition, the brother claimed that an individual identified as Faiz Modi was harassing his sister and abducted her while she was going to college.
She was made to sign some papers by him and fake marriage documents were prepared by blackmailing her with photos where she was caught in a compromising position, he alleged.
“This is a clear case of ‘love jihad’ and over half a dozen such cases have already been reported in the city in the past some time due to the disinterest shown by the police in investigating these cases,” Bohra claimed in his argument.