Hadiya To Supreme Court: 'I Am A Muslim And Want To Remain One.'

Hadiya  alias Akhila Ashokan, the woman at the center of the controversial Kerala ‘love jihad’ case, has filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court stating that she is a Muslim and wants to remain one.
In the affidavit, the 25-year-old further stated that she wants to stay the wife of Shafi Jahan, for whom she had converted to Islam in order to get married. In a Special Leave Petition, Hadiya said that she had embraced Islam after studying the religion and married Jahan out of her own free will. “I most humbly pray that my entire liberty may kindly be restored to me,” she added. Hadiya also asked the Supreme Court to appoint Jahan as her guardian.
On Tuesday, Hadiya said in her affidavit that her father was under the influence of “certain sections of people” who were trying to use him. “Otherwise, I do not see how my father, who is an atheist, would object to me changing my religion or marrying someone from a different religion,” she said.
Hadiya had repeatedly petitioned the apex court, requesting that she be allowed to be with her husband after the Kerala High Court annulled their marriage in May last year, terming it as an instance of ‘love jihad’. The HC had also made Hadiya’s father her legal guardian.
Jahan had challenged the high court order in the Supreme Court, which in turn referred the investigation to the National Investigation Agency.
Last month, a bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra said the legality of marriages among consenting adults couldn’t be examined by courts and investigating agencies and added that its decision on Hadiya’s marriage to Shafin Jahan would not be influenced by the NIA probe it had ordered into the larger “love jihad conspiracy”.
Stating that marriage needs to be separated from criminal conspiracy, the bench affirmed that Hadiya is an adult and not a child, and as such, the court cannot question her personal choice.