On Friday (8th October), Hadiya’s father, KM Asokan, whose marriage to a Muslim man and conversion to Islam caused a national uproar, petitioned the Kerala High Court, claiming that his daughter is being unlawfully detained by her husband, Shafin Jahan, and some of his associates.
In his plea, Asokan stated that the Homeo clinic Hadiya was running had closed and that he had been unable to contact her over the phone for the previous month.
In order to present Hadiya in court, he has thus requested the issuance of a writ of habeas corpus. “Whenever the petitioner called the detenu for the last month, the detenu has not received any calls and on many occasions, the mobile phone was switched off.
On 3rd December, the petitioner went to the clinic and found it was closed. The neighbours told the petitioner that they didn’t know about the same. Now the petitioner apprehends that she has been moved to the illegally custody of the place and control of the respondents 3 and 4. Now the detenu is in the illegal custody of the persons under collusion and connivance of the 4th and 6th respondent. So the detenu is to be released at the earliest,” the petition said.
The petition may initiate the second phase of Hadiya legal proceedings, which began in 2017. The initial controversy erupted five years prior. Hadiya, originally named Akhila, is a 31-year-old Keralan woman who converted to Islam and then got married to a Muslim, Shafin Jahan. Shafin Jahan was an active member of the PFI-affiliated Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI). Asokan has previously petitioned the High Court with a similar habeas corpus plea.
Asokan filed a similar habeas corpus petition with the Kerala High Court in 2016, claiming that Jahan had unlawfully detained her. In 2018, the Kerala High Court Division Bench’s ruling that had dissolved Hadiya and Shafin Jahan’s marriage was overturned by the Supreme Court, allowing Hadiya to live with her husband.
Asokan asserts that his daughter opened a homoeo clinic following her marriage to Shafin Jahan, having earned a Bachelor of Homoeopathic Medicine & Surgery (BHMS).
The clinic was close to A S Sainaba of Malappuram, Sathyasarani Educational and Charitable Trust, and Markazul Hidaya. Asokan used to call his daughter and occasionally visit the clinic because he was worried about her well-being.
Hadiya recently told her mother that she was no longer in a relationship with Shafin Jahan and didn’t know where he was when Asokan’s wife asked for their daughter to go with her.
Asokan hasn’t been able to get in touch with his daughter for the last month because she constantly turns off her phone. When he visited the clinic on December 3, he found it closed and that Hadiya’s whereabouts were unknown to the neighbours. Asokan now worries that his daughter is being held against her will by people connected to Shafin Jahan and Sainaba, and he believes there may have been collusion and complicity in this.
Asokan has expressed worries about his daughter’s safety, claiming that the people keeping her might be associated with the banned terrorist organization, the Popular Front of India. Representing the petitioner, Advocate C Rajendran asked the court to order Hadiya’s production in order to obtain her release.
Recently, during the release of the Bollywood movie named ‘The Kerala Story’, it had come to the fore that Hadiya had remarried a man from Thiruvananthapuram. However, she had not disclosed his identity fearing media publicity. According to CASA( Christian Association and Alliance for Social Action) it was PFI workers who initiated the remarriage and allowed Hadiya to move away from Jahan’s life.