The Supreme Court has sought the Chhattisgarh government’s response to a petition by a 33-year-old Muslim man who converted to Hinduism to marry a 23-year-old Hindu woman, who was later allegedly taken away by her parents. The man had approached the top court seeking his wife’s release from her parents’ custody after the Chhattisgarh High Court declined it, The Indian Express reported.
A bench headed by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra also directed Chhattisgarh’s Dhamtari district Superintendent of Police Rajnesh Singh to produce the woman in court on August 27.
The plea says that Mohammad Ibrahim Sidhiqui converted to Hinduism in February and changed his name to Aryan Arya to marry Anjali Jain. The couple got married on February 25, after which Jain returned to her parents home. When her family found out about the marriage, Jain fled, but the police found her before she could meet her husband and took her to a shelter for women, PTI reported.
Sidhiqui has alleged that the police made his wife sign a false statement saying that she wanted to live with her parents. The Chhattisgarh High Court ruled that “certain breathing space and time is required to be given in a free atmosphere to Anjali to make up her own independent mind”, and sent her back to her parents, the petition said.
In March, the top court had set aside a Kerala High Court verdict which nullified the marriage of Hadiya, a convert to Islam, to Shafin Jahan. “Marriage and intimacy of personal relationships are core of plurality in India,” the top court had said. “We can’t let state or others makes inroads into this extremely personal space.”
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