‘No one forced me to convert, want to go with my husband’

kottayam — Kerala woman Hadiya, who has to depose before the Supreme Court on Monday 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 their house in a village near Vaikom in this district, accompanied by a police team for a two-hour long journey to the airport. The direction Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi poses for a selfie with children during his public meeting at Dehgam of Gandhinagar district in Gujarat on Saturday. —

I am a Muslim. I was not forced. I want to be with my husband

Hadiya, who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man

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 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 welloiled 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 Shafin 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.

It was alleged that Hadiya was recruited by Daesh mission in Syria and Shafin Jahan was only a stooge.

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

Meanwhile, the Kerala government on October 7 told the top court that its police conducted a “thorough investigation” into her conversion and subsequent marriage to Shafin Jahan and did not find material warranting the transfer of probe to the National Investigation Agency. — PTI