New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday cancelled a Kerala High Court order annulling the marriage of Hadiya, a 24-year-old Kerala woman who converted to Islam and married a Muslim man.
The apex court said Hadiya is free to live with her husband Shafin Jahan and "pursue her endeavours," mentioning that the Kerala High Court should not have intervened.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, however, said probe by National Investigation Agency (NIA) into the criminal dimension into the case, if any, would continue.
The Kerala High Court had cancelled Hadiya's marriage with Shafin Jahan on a complaint by her father, who alleged that his daughter was a victim of ‘love jihad’, the term used by right wing groups for accusing Muslim men of drawing Hindu women into relationships, converting them and eventually recruiting them for terrorism.
Also Read: Kerala 'love jihad': The curious case of Hadiya aka Akhila​
Hadiya, a homeopathy student, was born Hindu and was named Akhila Ashokan by birth before she converted to Islam and changed her name.
Hadiya's marriage to Shafin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala High Court in 2017 after her parents alleged that their daughter had been brainwashed and forced to convert to Islam in a plan by terror group ISIS to indoctrinate and take her to Syria.
Hadiya had met Shafin Jahan, who was working in Oman. Jahan had returned to India recently, through a matrimonial website affiliated to an organisation which the NIA says it is probing for links to terror.
