We can now live a normal life, says husband Jahan
NEW DELHI/ TH IR UV ANA TH AP U RAM :“I feel we can lead a normal husband-wife life now,” said Shafin Jahan, Hadiya’s husband, as he received the dispatches from the Supreme Court from Tuesday morning.
“Allah is supreme. Truth will prevail, always,” he added.
Hearing a request made by Jahan, a bench of the SC made a statement long awaited by the couple: “That’s her choice.”
“You cannot investigate the marital aspect...you cannot investigate whether she married a good person or a bad person,” Chief Justice Dipak Misra said on Tuesday. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has been investigating — on directions of an SC order in August last year — if the marriage of 25-year-old Hadiya, a Hindu by birth, to 27-year-old Jahan, a Muslim, was a case of “love jihad.”
Since May 2017, when the Kerala high court annulled the marriage in response to a petition filed by Hadiya’s father, KM Ashokan, alleging forced conversion and indoctrination, the couple has jumped through endless legal hoops. First sent back to her parents’ house in Kerala and then placed in charge of her college principal in Tamil Nadu,Hadiya’s interactions with Jahan have been short and supervised.
Now, more than a year after she decided to change her religion and get married, Hadiya looks forward to living her life on her own terms. The homeopathy student was attending a class when she heard the news. “I went and told her what the court had said. She said she was happy,” said G Kannan, principal of her college in Salem.
Jahan, who described his struggle, from legal battles to terror charges, as “harrowing”, can’t wait to move on as well. Asked what the couple will do next, he said, “That I will decide after consulting with my wife. I am yet to talk to her. I will be meeting her in a couple of days.”
For the moment, he can’t thank the judicial system enough. “I have unflinching faith in judiciary. For people like us it is the last resort.”
The judiciary is the last resort for her father, too, who has been bewildered by the court’s remarks and hopes “it is an observation and not the final verdict.” Ashokan, who first went to court in January 16, 2017, continues to be convinced that the courts won’t “do something that goes against my daughter’s life.”
He will only believe the court’s words when he sees them in writing. If he is confronted with court documents repeating the words, Ashokan, who has alleged in the past that his daughter will be taken to Syria and recruited into ISIS, still won’t give up. “I will fight till the end,” he said.