Johnson Cherian.
Kerala girl Hadiya alias Akhila Asokan, whose conversion to Islam and marriage to Shafin Jahan, triggered a national controversy, on Wednesday said she needed total freedom and wanted to meet her husband.
She had arrived in Salem on Tuesday evening escorted by police on the directions of the Supreme Court, which permitted her to pursue her Bachelors in Homeopathic Medicine and Surgery course at a private college where she had enrolled some years ago and dropped out in 2015, following her marriage.
Speaking to journalists at the Sivaraj Homeopathic Medical College and Research Institute, about 10 km away from Salem, Ms Hadiya said she was asking only for her fundamental rights. She had made a plea to the court for freedom. “Till now I did not get the freedom I wanted,” she said.
She was at the college on Wednesday to complete the formalities for submitting an application to the Tamil Nadu Dr. M. G. R. Medical University to which the college was affiliated, for ‘condonation of the break of studies period’ to enable her to resume the internship.
Since the college needed further clarity on the Supreme Court order, she need to wait for a few more days till the college takes a final decision on her request, she said.
Ms. Hadiya said that she was not in possession of any phone and had not contacted any person whom she wanted to speak to.
Referring to her separation from her husband and confinement in her parents’ house for the past many months, Ms. Hadiya said that she was forced to put up with the people whom she hated. She alleged that her parents and relatives were compelling and making attempts to re-convert her.
She said that her parents issued statements saying that she was not mentally stable. There were lot of restrictions in the house where she was kept in confinement. Her parents did not even provide television in her room, due to which she could not keep abreast of the happenings taking place outside, she said.
Ms. Hadiya spent overnight at the women’s hostel of the college functioning at Rajaji Street on the Suramangalam Main Road in the city. The police had made tight security arrangements round the clock near the hostel, where 114 students are staying.
While the other hostel inmates took the college bus to reach the college on Wednesday, Ms. Hadiya, accompanied by Mr. Kannan, the head of the department and a woman police constable, reached the college in a car. A police escort vehicle provided security en route.
Meanwhile, Kalpana Sivaraj, the correspondent of college, said the institution is studying the contents of the Supreme Court order. The management will extend all support to her to complete the internship. The college has already forwarded the request letter of Ms. Hadiya to the University and is waiting for its nod, Ms. Kalpana added.
