The Hadiya love jihad case has become a hotly debated topic, ever since it became highlighted in the national discourse.
The popular perception of this case is that, Akhila and Shafin Jahan case is that they married in December 2016 via a marriage portal named waytonikah.com. Akhila’s father later petitioned the Kerala High Court claiming that Shafin was trying to recruit her for terror activities and also wanted to take her to Syria.
The father had also alleged that she was forced to convert after being abducted and wrongly confined at an illegal Islamic conversion centre before her so called marriage on December 19th 2016. The court later annulled it due to various reasons, one of them being the marriage certificate not being valid.
Shafin Jahan later appealed it in the Supreme Court after which the apex court ordered a NIA probe into the matter to which Shafin’s counsel Kapil Sibal had objected. In a hearing on 30th October, the court had asked that Hadiya be brought in front of the court and when that happened she claimed that, she wasn’t forcibly converted and had married her husband out of free will.
The Supreme Court later ruled that Hadiya be ‘freed’ from her parents’ custody and be allowed to continue her studies, while she had asked that she be allowed to live with her husband.
Soon after this ruling by the Supreme Court, a disturbing fact has emerged regarding her husband.
As per a Times of India report, Shafin Jahan the husband of Akhila Asokan was in touch with two key ISIS men who were chargesheeted in the Omar-al-Hind case.
Charges were pressed against Manseed and Safvan after they were arrested by the NIA in October, 2016 in connection with this Omar-al-Hind case which was believed to be a conspiracy hatched on the instructions of the ISIS handlers who wanted to target major political leaders, police officers and busy places in Southern India.
Media reports claim that as per NIA, Hadiya’s husband was in touch with this duo via a closed Facebook group and a messaging app. This Facebook group also included activists of SDPI the political arm of the radical Popular front of India (PFI).
The NIA has taken things a step further to claim that Manseed and SDPI were the ones who introduced Hadiya to Shafin, which is contradictory to the claim that the marriage portal waytonikah.com brought them together.
The logic provided to prove the same is that neither Hadiya nor Shafin had viewed each other’s profile on the matrimonial website before 31st December, by which time they were already married.
It remains to be seen whether the NIA, which is already scrutinising 32 love jihad cases from Kerala manages to find more full proof information regarding the matter.
