Kozhikode: Dr Hadiya is fine. And she wants to be left alone. But that’s a tall order for the Hindu woman who became the face of ‘love jihad’ in Kerala and the focus of a National Investigation Agency probe after she converted to Islam and married a Muslim man. Now, her father’s decision to move the Kerala High Court once again, on the grounds that she’s been missing for two months, means that Hadiya is under scrutiny again.
But she isn’t missing or untraceable, like her father KM Ashokan claims. She has remarried Khaled — an engineer she met as an arranged match — and moved to Thiruvananthapuram over two months ago.
“I’m fine. I’m happy. I have nothing else to say to anyone. My only message is that I am an adult and I can make my own choices,” she told ThePrint over the phone on Sunday. “I don’t understand why my private choices are constantly being blown out of proportion.”
When ThePrint met Hadiya in her former home in Mallapuram in June 2023, she made it clear that she was living a happy and peaceful life.
The 32-year-old made national headlines in 2017 when her marriage to her first husband, Shefin Jahan, was annulled by the Kerala High Court. “A girl aged 24 is weak and vulnerable, capable of being exploited in many ways,” it had ruled. The Supreme Court of India then began to adjudicate whose property she was — her father’s, or her husband’s.
She spent nearly two years living in limbo, caught in a constant tug-of-war between her father and her husband, Hinduism and Islam, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Popular Front of India.
She thought that her life would go back to normal in 2018, when the Supreme Court ruled that she was an adult with the power to make her own decisions, and restored her marriage. She completed a homoeopathy course and became a practising homoeopathic doctor.
She has been living away from her parents since late 2017 and divorced her ex-husband in 2023. She just wants to leave that part of her life in the past now.
Hadiya is a woman with a strong sense of agency, who does exactly what she sets her mind to, according to her close friend Zainab Zaynuddin. Those closest to her are fiercely protective of this agency.
Also read: How about calling Hadiya’s case ‘Kerala Hindutva case’ instead of ‘Kerala Love Jihad case’?
An independent woman
Hadiya set up a clinic because she wanted to be financially independent, and practice homoeopathy. She’s enrolled herself in self-improvement classes and further homoeopathic training modules because she wants to constantly upskill.
“All my choices are mine,” she had told ThePrint in June. “I am a Muslim because I am connected to this faith.” Similarly, she married Jahan of her own volition and split up with him five years later because they were in an unhappy marriage. She remarried because she wanted to, and moved to Thiruvananthapuram for a fresh start. She doesn’t regret her choices at all.
Hadiya blames the press and politics for upending her life over the 2017-18 case and is frustrated by fresh rumours that she is being brainwashed again.
“You’ve seen my life. Don’t you think I’m happy?” she asked. “I am tired of people trying to ruin my happiness because they can’t believe I can actually be happy.”
She told ThePrint that her remarriage to Khalid has opened a new chapter in her life. She’s still figuring out the lay of the land in Thiruvananthapuram and wants to restart her clinic. Before moving with her second husband to Kerala’s capital city, she was living 400 km away, in Mallapuram. Her pride and joy was her independent homoeopathic practice, Dr. Hadiya’s Homeopathy Clinic, right opposite a local school and busy bus stand in the heart of a small town called Othukkungal.
Her clinic’s board proudly proclaimed ‘Dr. Akhila Ashokan (Hadiya)’ — she’s not running away from the fact that she was born a Hindu and converted to Islam. She’s still a practising Muslim and swears that her faith is what got her through the messy and humiliating court case that stripped her of all her agency.
Her chosen family includes Zainab Zaynuddin, the woman accused of converting her and thousands of others to Islam. In fact, she visited Zainab and her former home just outside the city of Malappuram earlier this week and spent two days there before going back to Thiruvananthapuram.
Her parents still live in Vaikom, where she grew up. Hadiya has repeatedly said that she doesn’t know why her father claims she’s being forced to do things against her will when they speak every week — her parents have even visited her clinic. She says that her father is politicising the issue under RSS’ influence.
Hadiya split from her ex-husband Jahan, who has been living in Muscat since March 2023. Their divorce was only finalised a few months ago. Hadiya continued to live in their rented house in the same compound as Zainab and her family. Hadiya sustained herself with the money she earned as a doctor.
Zainab is fiercely protective of Hadiya’s agency, especially because she has spent so much time wrestling for control over her own life. The family lets Hadiya do as she pleases and defers to her judgement.
“The two words I can use to describe Hadiya are ‘simple’ and ‘bold,’” Zainab had told ThePrint in June. “She has a strong mind and a good heart. She lives her life in truth.”
Also read: Hadiya case is all about our old neurosis over Muslim men, invaders, seducers
A disrupted life
The trouble began in 2015, when Hadiya converted to Islam. She left home in January 2016 to stay with a friend. The same month her father, Ashokan, filed a Habeas Corpus petition at the Kerala High Court.
In December 2016, she appeared in court with Jahan for the first time. She hadn’t disclosed that she’d gotten married — but did reveal that she’d met him online and that Zainab had helped with the match. She also made clear that she’d converted to Islam before she met Jahan, and therefore hers was not a case of ‘love jihad’.
In May 2017, the High Court of Kerala declared Hadiya’s marriage null and void. The grounds of the annulment were that she had been indoctrinated and forcibly converted to Islam, and the court directed her to live with her parents — a period she refers to as house arrest. Jahan then moved the Supreme Court in July 2017. Hadiya was represented by top lawyers Kabil Sibal and Indira Jaisingh, who argued that an adult woman of sound mind should be allowed to make her own choices.
In November of that year, the NIA submitted a status report on the case and Hadiya was released from her parents’ care. She returned to Salem to finish her education. In March 2018, the Supreme Court restored her marriage.
But in the five years since, the case has haunted her life — and scarred her loved ones.
Zainab, who has been Hadiya’s main source of support since 2016, has been put through the wringer. She was Hadiya’s mentor, and took her after she completed her education.
Zainab confirmed that she was a member of the women’s wing of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), but resigned in 2018. She still lives in the same home, with her husband, mother-in-law, daughter and granddaughter, as she did when she met Hadiya. Zainab’s son, who was inspected by child protection services when he was in 8th grade because of his mother’s involvement in Hadiya’s case, is now in his first year of law school.
The NIA probed Hadiya’s marriage to Jahan in 2018 and said it could not find any evidence of love jihad. The furore around her being an ‘ISIS bride’ was connected to the fact that her then-husband Jahan had been on the same WhatsApp group as someone who had gone to Syria to join the Islamic State. It was amplified by Zainab’s SDPI connection.
“I was never concerned about what would happen with us,” Zainab said. “Because I know the truth — I have nothing to hide, and nothing to be afraid of.”
Also read: Sudipto Sen’s The Kerala Story isn’t ‘true’ – it’s steeped in damned lies & outrageous stats
Trying to return to normalcy
There’s a steeliness about her that completely contradicts the helpless image the court case painted. But she says she doesn’t carry any anger over what happened to her. Her polite demeanour hides a stubborn sense of will — and this is something everyone around her recognises, including Zainab, her best friend Fatima, and all their neighbours.
And while the trauma of the case is still a fresh wound for her loved ones — including her parents, since Ashokan has filed a second Habeas Corpus petition in concern over her wellbeing — she’s determined to continue living life on her own terms.
“I don’t question why this has all happened to me. That’s not my frame of mind,” she said. “I’ll deal with whatever happens along the way.”