'Muslim by choice, want to live with husband': Hadiya to SC
New Delhi: Kerala's Hadiya has told the Supreme Court today that she is a Muslim and wants to live as one. She has requested judges in an affidavit that she be allowed to live with her husband Shafin Jehan, who she married after she converted to Islam.
"I embraced Islam on my choice as per my conscience and on my own free will, after studying about Islam and thereafter I married Shafin Jahan. I further pray that this court may be kind enough to appoint my husband as my guardian," said Hadiya, adding that she "continues to live in confinement."
Hadiya, a 24-year-old homeopathy student, was born Hindu and was called Akhila Ashokan before she converted to Islam and changed her name. Her case has been labelled as "love jihad" by her parents and others; it is a term used by right wing groups to accuse Muslim men of marrying Hindu women, converting them and recruiting them for terrorism.
Hadiya's marriage to Shafin Jahan was annulled by the Kerala High Court last year after her parents alleged that she had been brainwashed and forced to convert to Islam in a plan by terror group ISIS to indoctrinate and take her to Syria.
Shafin Jahan had appealed in the Supreme Court against the high court order cancelling their marriage. The top court had directed the NIA to investigate whether there are any terror links to the case.
In her affidavit today, Hadiya has said that she has been "under confinement without the freedom that I am entitled to. Even now I am under police surveillance. I most humbly pray that my entire liberty may kindly be restored to me."
A marriage has to be separated from any criminal action, aspect or conspiracy, "otherwise we will be creating bad precedent", a Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra had said.
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Death toll from Israeli strikes in northeast Lebanon rises from 8 to 24, Lebanese news agency says
Deir al-Balah, Nov 1: Israeli airstrikes on Friday killed at least 24 people in northeastern Lebanon, the country's news agency said, raising the death toll from eight there.
It was the latest deadly toll in the area since the conflict between Israel and the Lebanese group Hezbollah escalated last month.
Israel's military has said that its operation in Lebanon is targeting Hezbollah's military infrastructure.
Lebanon's state National news Agency reported four airstrikes in different villages across country's northeast, saying rescuers were still searching for survivors in Younine, a town in the Bekaa Valley, from the rubble of a targeted house.
Hussein Haj Hassan, a Lebanese lawmaker representing the region in Baalbek-Hermel region, said that 60,000 people have already fled their homes in the area due to Israeli bombardment.
