Akhila, alias Hadiya, the 25-year-old poster girl of Kerala's alleged love jehad, got the much-needed relief on Monday from the Supreme Court, which allowed her freedom from her parents' custody in Kerala and complete her five-year homoeopathy course from a college in Salem in Tamil Nadu.
Speaking to the judges in the open court, she pleaded for Rs freedom' after being kept under house arrest for the past six months. She also wished to complete the 11-month internship or house surgeon, which she had to leave midway due to proceedings before the Kerala High Court. The HC on May 24 this year annulled her marriage with a Muslim youth Shafin Jahan and ordered her to remain with parents.
The Bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra, Justices AM Khanwilkar and DY Chandrachud directed the Kerala Government to book her ticket to Salem at the earliest and ordered the Shivaraj Homeopathy Medical College, Salem to allow her to take the course and pursue internship.
The SC also asked the Salem college to provide her an accommodation in the
college hostel. The court appointed the Dean of the college to be her guardian although the girl preferred her husband in that role. The Tamil Nadu Police has been directed to monitor her safety.
Almost half-an-hour later, the Bench got a clear picture that the girl did not prefer to be with her parents and desired to pursue her career as a homoeopathic doctor. While keeping her away from both her parents and husband, the Bench said it will decide on the validity of the HC order annulling her marriage at a later stage.
Since Hadiya is an adult, the court was faced with the question whether legally it could interfere with the girl's choice of her life and marriage. The girl's father had argued through his counsel
Shyam Diwan that her daughter was a victim of the so-called Rs love jehad by which she was converted and married off to a boy, alleged to have links with global terror organisation ISIS.
For over an hour, while the girl stood in the court surrounded by a posse of policemen, the Bench sought the views of the lawyers on both sides on whether it was appropriate to first hear the girl or examine the documents submitted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) pointing to the larger conspiracy involving not just Hadiya but 89 similarly-placed girls.
Additional Solicitor General Maninder Singh, who presented the 100-page NIA report, said Akhila was "indoctrinated" to join Muslim faith by Sathya Sarini, the organisation where she stayed. This was done at the behest of the Popular Front of India (PFI), which, he said, had a larger design to convert Hindu girls to Muslim faith and later get them married off to boys who worked actively for PFI. Jahan, according to NIA, had links with ISIS recruiters, as made evident from certain conversations on his Facebook page.
Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, who appeared for Jahan, wondered why the Bench was to be influenced by the material as the only issue before the court related to the liberty and autonomy of an individual. He submitted that the issue at hand was not on whether she rightly converted, or gave her consent rightly, or even made the right choice to marry Jahan. The issue is whether she has her individual autonomy and liberty to choose how she wants to live.
The court said, "In our judicial career, this is the first-of-its-kind case we have to deal with. We want to set the parameters that when dealing with similar cases, what is the threshold that the court has to pass, in order to merit interference with individual autonomy."
After Sibal remained persistent, the court allowed Hadiya to tell her story.