Love wins as HC reunites interfaith couple

MUMBAI: The Bombay high court on Monday reunited an interfaith couple following a petition filed by the man, claiming that his wife was being illegally detained by her family members at Surat.
The division bench of justice Bharati Dangre and justice Manjusha Deshpande allowed the woman to resume cohabitation with her husband – Shamshad, who had embraced Hinduism and became Sham for her – after the woman refused to give in to last-minute attempts by her family members to change her mind and expressed her desire to live with her husband.
“We have witnessed the corpus (the petitioner’s wife) making a decision of her free will, truly making the belief, ‘Love triumphs over all’ come true,” said the bench, while directing the police to allow the woman to join her husband.
The court passed the comment after interacting with the woman for two hours in the presence of both Shamshad and her family members, following which the family permitted her to be with Shamshad aka Sham after she made her position clear.
Sham and the woman fell in love and eloped from Surat, fearing issues as they were from different faiths. As per the petitioner, they reached Mumbai in the first week of March and had a marriage ceremony on March 11 as per Hindu rites at a temple in Mumbai’s Nirmal Nagar – three days after Shamshad changed his religion and became Sham.
However, the situation became difficult after Sham’s brother-in-law came to their house on March 12 and told them that their father was sick and was admitted to a hospital in Surat. Sham submitted that his wife went to Surat out of humanitarian consideration based on her brother’s assurance that she could return to her husband later.
However, when Sham attempted to contact her in Surat, he found her phone switched off and her family members unresponsive. When she took a call in between, she informed Sham that “she was deceived and was being pressured not to continue any relationship with him.”
Subsequently, Sham filed a written complaint with the DN Nagar police station on March 20 and initiated legal proceedings, requesting that she be produced in court. Pursuant to court orders, the police traced her and brought her to the city.
After she was produced before them, the judges spoke to the woman and observed that Sham’s partner “promptly chose the path leading her to Shamshad, the Petitioner, as she expressed that she was confident that she would be happy in his company and it is because of her love towards him, she had performed the marriage.”
She told the court that Sham never asked her to convert to Islam, as alleged by her family members. On the contrary, she said, he agreed to follow Hinduism and accordingly became Sham. She expressed her desire to return to her husband even though her brother and father threatened to disown her.
She remained firm on her decision and made it clear to her brother that she wanted to accompany her husband, even though her father and brother tried to emotionally blackmail her by saying they would presume her dead if she went back to her husband. They also tried to make her speak to her mother, but she remained firm in her decision and chose love over her family.
The court observed that the woman “was not unlawfully detained by her family members” but as the woman was not sure of the choice she had to make, in choosing between her family or Shamshad, she stayed with her family in Surat. “We must also add that they are not liable for any action once she has made up her mind to move out of her parental home,” the court said.