Hadiya’s chosen guardian and a leader of National Women's Front (NWF), 45-year-old Sainaba has come down heavily on the Muslim convert's father Asokan, even calling him a pawn in the hands of Islamophobes.
Sainaba, a respondent in the Hadiya case, said that the 25-year-old woman from Vaikkom in Kottayam district, has all the right to choose a religion of her choice.
In a counter affidavit filed at the Supreme Court, Sainaba, who is the eighth respondent in the case, said that the Kerala High Court judgment from May 2017 annulling the marriage of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan is "wholly wrong, factually, legally and constitutionally."
She added that the order has caused "gross miscarriage of justice."
In her counter affidavit to Asokan's (first respondent) affidavit at the SC, Sainaba said that Islamophobic people were behind Hadiya's father and were using him to create unrest in the state.
Denying allegations against her by Asokan, Sainaba said in her affidavit, "It is very clear from his bald and fallacious allegations that he is dancing in tune with the music played by somebody, who controls from behind reducing him to a pawn in their hands."
"It is very clear that the first respondent is only dancing to the tune of music played by those, who are guided by Islamophobia and targeting Islam and believers of Islam," she said.
Sainaba also pointed out that while Asokan had barred several people including the media, women activists and State Women's Rights Commission from meeting Hadiya, he allowed right wing people including BJP State President Kummanam Rajasekharan and activist Rahul Easwar to enter the house and hold talks with him.
The allegation that Hadiya was brainwashed and heavily indoctrinated are "mere illusions and baseless allegations," Sainaba argued. Saying that she never brainwashed Hadiya to embrace Islam, Sainaba said that such allegations raised by Asokan "shows his misunderstanding and intolerance towards Islam."
Sainaba said that Islam was the second largest religion in the world and that even to think that crores of people including eminent intellectuals and thinkers who embraced Islam did so out of "indoctrination" was "baseless and a perverse story."
These "influential anti-social and anti-national persons and organisations, who nurture unwarranted Islamophobia and attempt to divide and polarize the society against Islam by any hook or crook with ulterior motives of achieving power destroying the harmony and national integrity," she said.
She argued that these "desperate anti-social elements' have not been able to gain power in Kerala and that they will do so by any hook and crook to gain power in troubled waters and for this, they are first creating trouble themselves, by using Asokan.
In her counter affidavit, Sainaba has also sought investigation against the “forces acting behind Asokan.”
The case
The case of conversion and subsequent marriage of Hadiya (born Akhila) to a Muslim man Shafin Jahan has reached the Supreme Court, with the latter moving a special leave petition against the Kerala High Court order annulling their marriage.
While a bench of the SC had earlier in August last year ordered an NIA probe in to the case, a bench headed by the Chief Justice of India said that the NIA can probe anything but not the marriage of the duo. The court, that heard Hadiya in November last year, has now made her party to the case and have asked her to file an affidavit before the next hearing.