All eyes on Hadia: What will she say in SC?

Will Akhila, alias Hadia, the 25-year-old Keralite Hindu woman, who embraced Islam two years ago and married a Muslim youth, Shaffin Jahan, in an alleged case of Love Jehad, tell the Supreme Court on Monday that both the actions were on her own free will? Or is she going to say that she has been a victim of forced conversion in the hands of Islamists?

Hadia reiterated on Saturday that both the decisions were her own but that has not stopped various political and religious organisations and other concerned parties in Kerala and elsewhere from speculating on the stand she will be taking in the Supreme Court when she appears before it as per an order it had issued on October 30 to the police and her father, KM Asokan.

A large crowd of police personnel, social workers, mediamen and onlookers gathered around the house of her father KM Asokan at TV Puram, Vaikom in Kottayam district where she had been lodged since May 25, the day the High Court granted her custody to him by annulling her marriage with Shaffin Jahan (27), as she left for the Kochi airport early Saturday afternoon.

Dramatic scenes were witnessed at the Kochi airport as Hadia reached there under tight security arranged by scores of police personnel to board an evening flight to Delhi. Despite the efforts of the police to block her from communicating with newsmen, she shouted out to them that she embraced Islam on her own and that she wanted to go with Shaffin Jahan.

“I am a Muslim... I want justice. Nobody had forced me to convert. Nobody had forced me for marriage. Shaffin Jahan is my husband. I want to go with my husband,” she said at the Kochi airport while walking to the departure terminal. She had reportedly been shouting the same sentences from inside the vehicle on her way from Vaikom to the Kochi airport.

According to observers, the stakes in the case are high for all concerned parties: Asokan who sees his daughter’s conversion as the result of a plot, Sangh Pariwar outfits which view it as a case of terror-inspired Love Jehad, Islamist outfits eager to establish that they are not in the business of conversion through pressure and rights workers who uphold Hadia’s right to choose.

The High Court’s May order had stirred a hornets’ nest in Kerala with human rights, women’s rights and Left activists and Muslim religious outfits interpreting it as an example of judiciary’s infringement upon the rights of a 25-year-old woman with professional education who, as per Constitution, is free to choose her religion and life partner.

The NIA, which was asked by the Supreme Court on August 16 to look into the circumstances of Hadia’s conversion, had the other day submitted a report to it on the woman’s condition at her parents’ place. As per reports in a section of the media, the NIA has reported that she had converted and married on her own and not under any kind of pressure.

The agency had earlier reported that Hadia was a victim of a conversion programme — allegedly run by Sathyasarani, an institution controlled by Islamist outfit Popular Front of India — in Kerala where a well-oiled machinery involved in indoctrination and radicalisation of women was working and that 89 such cases had been reported in the State so far.

Hadia’s court-ordered stay at her father’s house under security provided by the State police had led to a lot of controversies.

After interviewing her at the house, young social activist Rahul Easwar had produced her voice record in which she was heard saying that she was facing torture from Asokan and that she could be killed anytime.

The conduct of Asokan with regard to the custody of Hadia as seen in his act of permitting Rekha Sharma, acting chief of the National Commission for Women, to visit her even when he refused to allow the Kerala Women’s Commission chief, MC Josephine to meet her, also kicked up a row with charges being raised that he was acting as per the Sangh Pariwar’s plan.

The Supreme Court is primarily looking into the issue of the annulment of Hadia’s marriage with Jahan, whom right wingers are describing as an extremist Muslim, on the basis of a petition he filed against the High Court’s order. “But the other related matters may come to the court’s consideration as corollaries,” said a senior lawyer in the Kerala High Court.

Hadia’s father had last week submitted a petition in the Supreme Court requesting that her hearing on Monday should be held in-camera and not in the open court. Akhila had embraced Islam and assumed the name of Hadia in 2015 when she was a student of homeopathy medicine in Tamil Nadu and married Shaffin Jahan on December 19 last year.