Akhila converted to Islam; atheist father hopes she will return to her faith. Akhila converted to Islam; atheist father hopes she will return to her faith.

Four months after his daughter was sent home by the Kerala High Court, which nullified her marriage and put her under police watch, Akhila a.k.a Hadiya’s father K M Asokan said he was waiting for the NIA to submit its report in the Supreme Court. “I will obey whatever the court says. Once the NIA submits the report, I hope I will also get a chance to read it. Then I will read it out to my daughter, and will be done with my job as a father,” he said.

Asokan hoped the report would help Hadiya realise the “dangerous path” she had chosen by converting to Islam. The NIA is likely to submit the report on October 3.

In his first detailed interview since the controversy over the alleged love jihad broke, the 57-year-old, who has been under attack from activists for not letting anyone meet Hadiya, said he couldn’t describe his pain or how isolated he felt. Particularly about the picture of him as a narrow-minded person.

Pointing out that he is an atheist himself, he said over the phone, “My daughter is my life, my wealth… I would have happily supported her even if she had gone in for an inter-religious marriage. I don’t have a problem with conversions too. But this was shady, the PFI (the Popular Front of India) had an agenda. The PFI’s woman leader, Sainaba, made her believe I would kidnap her from their custody with the help of RSS… Sainaba had no business to keep my daughter. Her phones were confiscated… Even the court noticed the shady manner in which they conducted her marriage in a single day.”

After the Kerala High Court nullified the marriage, her husband Shefin Jahan filed an appeal in the Supreme Court, which ordered an NIA probe.

“I served in the Army for 19 years, from the age of 19. I respect the Constitution and the judiciary, I have great faith in them,” Asokan said. However, he denied reports that Hadiya had agreed to return to Hinduism. “There is no change in her,” he said.

He had also approached the Arsha Vidya Samajam, the controversial yoga centre in Kochi, to get her back to Hinduism, he admitted. One of their volunteers visited Hadiya and talked to her. Asokan also invited one of the two girls who knew Hadiya and returned to Hinduism with the help of the centre. “I thought a meeting with the girl (Athira) will help my daughter realise the dangers,” he said.

Explaining why he went to court, Asokan said that despite being a rationalist, he had always respected Hadiya and his wife’s temple visits. “But I was devastated when my daughter started talking the most irrational language.”

He was shocked to hear she had started attending her college in Salem in headscarf and had approached the controversial Islamic learning centre Sathya Sarani, he added. The centre has links to the radical PFI, which is accused of chopping the hands of a college professor over Prophet Mohammad’s depiction.

Asokan said he moved the first habeas corpus in the High Court in early January 2016 after Hadiya “went missing”. “She was in PFI custody without permission to speak to her parents. My petition forced them to produce her in court. But she refused to come with us,” he said. “Still I used to call my daughter every day, at least twice.”

In August 2016, he added, he returned to the court, seeking Hadiya’s custody, after reports of 21 Keralites fleeing to join the Islamic State. “When I called her sometime in July or August, I asked Akhila if she had plans to go to Syria to rear goats (a life that puritan Dammaj Salafi groups lead to recreate the Prophet’s era). She said they had plans to go but chose to stay back as friends suggested that she complete her course (homeopathy) first.”

Asokan pointed out how the mother of Nimisha (now Fathima), one among the 21 who fled Kerala after conversion and marriage to a Christian youth, had failed to stop her. “When Bindu fought for her daughter’s custody, the court cited an adult’s constitutional rights and allowed her to go. Her daughter joined the IS. Luckily, my daughter is with me now,” he said.

Describing how he had pampered Hadiya, Asokan said he was the son of a toddy tapper, the eldest of eight children, with the responsibility of five sisters. “I don’t know if you can picture that. I could clear my 10th only at the age of 19. Still I was a Communist, a member of the CPI, I used to read a lot. I wanted to study further, but my commitments made me join the Army after 10th.”

After he had ensured his sisters were educated and married, Asokan decided to have own family. “Akhila is my only child. We decided to have only one child as we wanted to give her the best. When she joined the homeopathy course, all her friends had to take loans but I had ready cash for her studies. When I joined as a peon in a defence court after retirement, my salary and the ATM card would be with her, she would handle them. I haven’t asked for the card back even now,” Asokan said, adding that he hadn’t gone to work since his legal fight began.

With some claiming he has BJP links, Asokan said he would take help from whoever offered it. His own party, the CPI, had not helped in the case at all, he said. “But others have helped me, lawyers, judicial officers, leaders from other parties. Maybe the BJP and RSS people have helped more. That doesn’t make me a BJP man, neither can I predict where all this suffering will take me. I am a desperate father, I will seek help from anyone.”

Asokan added that his priority was not to convince intellectuals or rights groups about his intentions but his daughter, and that there were many trying to capitalise on their crisis.

Asked whether they had fights or disagreements, like other parents and children, Asokan recalled, “Oh yes, I used to fight with her everyday, over TV… I wanted to watch news channels while she hated them. And one of us won finally… Her mother also used to fight with her. Akhila always wanted to go out with her friends when home during vacations, and her mother wanted to spend time with her only child.”

Asokan wondered whether this lack of interest in news, in “what was happening around her”, made Hadiya “gullible”.

But at least when it comes to TV, things remain the same. Asokan said he doesn’t try for long conversations with Hadiya anymore. “She talks to her mother as usual, watching TV most of the time. We get a Malayalam newspaper too at home. She thinks that defeating me will help her cause. But I will keep myself alive till the final court order… I am sure my daughter will come back.”

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