Thiruvananthapuram: The Kerala High Court on Wednesday declared a marriage "null and void" and held that a marriage was a very important decision of girl's life which cannot be taken without an active involvement of her parents. The performed marriage is a "sham" and of "no consequence" before the law, the court said.
Father of the girl, while filing a habeas corpus, had also alleged that efforts were being made to recruit his daughter for the Islamic State and send her to Syria.
The division bench also asked the state police chief to initiate a probe into the case and look into all these allegations.
Shafin Jahan, the husband of the girl, stated that the high court wasn't guarding the couple's constitutional rights while giving such an order. The court has also directed that the girl, Akhila alias Hadhiya, be sent to her parents. Jahan said that he will take all the legal steps, including moving the Supreme Court.
Shafin said that he and Hadhiya got married on December 19, 2016, after meeting in November through a matrimonial website.
According to Jahan, Hadhiya, was a Bachelor of Homeopathic Medicine And Surgery (BHMS) student in Salem, Tamil Nadu, where she lived with two of her Muslim roommates.
Hadhiya converted to Islam in 2015 after getting attracted towards the religion. "She left her parents' house after they objected to her decision of converting to Islam. That's when her parents filed the first habeas corpus," said Jahan.
At that time Hadhiya had told the court that she wanted to follow the "religion of her choice" to which the court responded by saying that she was free to follow any religion, Jahan said. "It was only after the court's order that she went to Sathya Sarani, a Muslim organisation, to study Islam," Jahan added.
Meanwhile, in the second habeas corpus filed after the couple got married, the parents of the girl had asserted that Hadhiya was "under illegal detention", all this while. They also alleged that efforts were made to recruit her to Islamic state. Hadhiya, however, denied all such charges in the court, according to Jahan.
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