Chhattisgarh man who moved SC for wife’s custody: ‘Did not want her to convert to avert trouble – I became Hindu’
Ibrahim Sidhiqui, the Chhattisgarh resident who converted to Hinduism at an Arya Samaj temple in Raipur to marry a Jain woman, and who has now petitioned the Supreme Court, seeking that she be produced before court and for their protection, says that he had asked her against converting to Islam since they had “anticipated trouble”.
“I told her that I didn’t want her to convert. I wanted her to remain what she was. I told her I would do it, because we had anticipated trouble,” Sidhiqui, who took the name Aryan Arya after conversion in February this year, told The Indian Express.
Sidhiqui petitioned the apex court after Chhattisgarh High Court gave the woman, Anjali Jain, 23, two options: to either live with her parents, or at the Government Degree College Hostel in Bilaspur.
“The legal option (in Supreme Court) is my only option,” he said, speaking to The Indian Express on August 8, a week after the Chhattisgarh HC verdict but before he moved the apex court.
Sidhiqui said that he had met Anjali in 2015, when she was a BCA student at Genesis College, Dhamtari, where he worked as a sound engineer. “By 2016, we had fallen in love. I had always told her that I had been married once in 2013, and divorced a year later. She knew everything,” Sidhiqui said.
But Deepak Jain, an uncle of Anjali, maintained that Sidhiqui did not come clear before the authorities about his earlier marriage. Deepak Jain told The Indian Express, “There are several reservations. Look at the age difference: he is 33 and she is a child of 22-23. He says he converted to Hinduism, but his certificates still say he is Ibrahim Siddiqui. He didn’t even tell the authorities that he was married before.”
Having converted on February 23, Sidhiqui said, “We completed the rituals and went to a magistrate. But she didn’t want to leave her family just yet, but in three months after she visited her grandmother in Madhya Pradesh.”
But even if they didn’t marry in Dhamtari – “someone would find out in Dhamtari, and we knew our families would not approve of the marriage”, as Sidhiqui reasoned – their communities did find out. The city saw another elopement towards the end of June, and as parents of the woman in that case – also Jains – checked the register at the Arya Samaj temple in Raipur, they found Ibrahim and Anjali’s names on the wedding register.
At 2 am on June 30, Sidhiqui waited in his car about a kilometre from her house. He had to be around a blind turn. He kept waiting for her to make that turn, but Anjali never showed up. “She left home and was walking towards the car but a police van picked her up and asked what she was doing out so late…. She didn’t first tell them where she lived, as she thought they would take her back. Despite her protests, the police took her to a women’s centre, and in the morning dropped her home. From that day, her parents didn’t let her out,” he claimed.
Four days later, Sidhiqui filed a Habeaus Corpus petition before Chhattisgarh HC, claiming that Anjali was being illegally detained. A month later, Anjali was produced before the HC bench of Chief Justice A K Tripathi and Justice Prashant Mishra, which said that they did not want to comment on the validity of the marriage but that they had spoken to Anjali “in chamber.” The judgment states, “She…categorically stated that she has not been illegally detained by her parents but the parents surely have serious reservation with regard to the relation, or the so-called marriage to the petitioner.”
The HC observed that emotions were running high from both sides and they were concerned for the safety of both Sidhiqui and Anjali. It said Anjali required breathing space to make up her mind, and that “under the circumstances” the court could not direct that she be “released in favour of the petitioner…”.
Challenging the order in apex court, Sidhiqui argued that Anjali had “in open court” repeatedly expressed her wish to live with the petitioner, but the court failed to record it. The petition says, citing the Hadiya case, “…It is submitted that the order has been passed in clear contravention of the law laid down by this Hon’ble Court in Shafin Jahan v. Asokan K M & Others…and against express wish of the detenue to stay with her husband, the Petitioner.”
The petition states that Anjali’s family is suspected to be altering her medical state by feeding her harmful and psychotropic substances, and that she was no longer at the Bilaspur hostel.
On Friday, a Supreme Court bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justice D Y Chandrachud ordered the Dhamtari SP to present Anjali before court on August 27. Rajnesh Singh, the SP, said, “We have been told that she is currently in hospital, with very low haemoglobin. We are finding out which hospital she is in. Of course the Supreme Courts order will be complied with.”
Asked about Anjali’s whereabouts, her uncle Deepak Jain said, “There is so much mental pressure that she is not well. She is in a hospital. She is refusing to eat for long hours, and is barely in her right mind. We intend to go to the Supreme Court to say that she be granted more time to recover before she can express what she wants in the right frame of mind.”
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