New Delhi: Kerala woman Hadiya, who is at the centre of the Love Jihad controversy, will appear before the Supreme Court on Monday and present her side of the argument on her alleged forced conversion to Islam.
Hadiya, who arrived in the national capital on Saturday, has said she wanted to be with her husband. "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 to an airport in Kerala for departure to Delhi.
Her father’s lawyer has said that no relevance should be given to what she has to say, claiming that Hadiya was “highly indoctrinated and brainwashed" and needs to come out of the “mental kidnapping".
Hadiya had converted to Islam and married a Muslim man named Shafin Jahan.
The direction 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 AM Khanwilkar and DY 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 NIA, represented by Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, had said there was a well-oiled machinery working in Kerala that was indoctrinating and radicalizing 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 KM Ashokan, claimed that 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.
Hadiya, a Hindu, had converted to Islam and later married Jahan. It was alleged that she was recruited by ISIS' mission in Syria and Jahan was only a stooge.
Jahan had on September 20 approached the apex court seeking recall of its August 16 order, directing the NIA to investigate the controversial case of conversion and marriage of a Hindu woman with him.
Meanwhile, the Kerala government on October 7 told the Supreme Court that its police conducted a "thorough investigation" into her conversion and subsequent marriage to Jahan and did not find material warranting the transfer of probe to the National Investigation Agency.
Jahan had moved the Supreme Court after the Kerala high court annulled his marriage, saying it was an insult to the independence of women in the country.
(With PTI inputs)
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