A 33-year-old Muslim man, who converted to Hinduism to marry a 23-year-old Hindu girl in Chhattisgarh, has approached the Supreme Court after his wife was taken away by her parents.
Mohd Ibrahim Sidiqui, who had converted to Hinduism and became Aryan Arya, has challenged the order of the Chhattisgarh High Court, which had refused to direct his wife Anjali Jain's family to allow her to stay with him.
A bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice DY Chandrachud has asked the Chhattisgarh government to respond to Mr Sidiqui's petition, which alleges a threat to him and his wife, and says that she is being deprived of her liberty by her family.
Mr Sidiqui says he is being threatened by his wife's family and some others.
According to the petition, his wife had told the high court that she is 23 and willingly married him. But the high court asked her to either live with her parents or stay in a hostel.
The two had been in a relationship for two-three years before they got married, the petition says.
On February 23, Mr Sidiqui converted and took the name Aryan Arya to marry Anjali Jain. The wedding took place at an Arya Samaj temple in Raipur, Chhattisgarh, on February 25.
Anjali Jain returned to her parents' home after the marriage but did not immediately inform her family.
When her parents found out, the couple decided that Anjali would leave her parents' home without telling them.
She left home on June 30, but the police found her before she could meet her husband and took her to a shelter for women.
Mr Sidiqui alleges that the police recorded a false statement that Anjali wanted to stay with her parents and handed her over to her father.
He then approached the high court, which summoned Anjali Jain and her father on July 30.
The high court, after interacting with Anjali Jain, held that she had denied being forced to stay with her parents and that her parents had serious reservations about her marriage.
The court, according to Mr Sidiqui's petition to the Supreme Court, had 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".
The case is similar to that of Kerala woman Hadiya, who had converted to Islam to marry a Muslim man. The top court in April set aside a Kerala High Court verdict and restored the inter-faith marriage of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan, saying the woman had "absolute autonomy over her person".
