Kozhikode: Hadiya, whose conversion and marriage drew national attention, on Monday demanded compensation from the state government for keeping her ‘under house arrest.’ “Two of my freedom was curtailed - right to live with a religion I believed and to be with my husband,” she told reporters here. “Nobody even cared about six months of my house arrest. Instead, all were busy discussing my conversion. They ruined two crucial years of my life.” She asserted that her conversion was out of conviction and she didn't do it to get married, but “just happened eventually.”
“I will never blame my parents for mistreating me,” she said. “My responsibility to parents begins with my birth, and as a true Islam follower, I would take care of them.” She said during confinement at home, many including psychiatrists, religious leaders and politicians visited her “with a single motto” of breaking her belief in Islam. “I firmly believe only this religion is right,” she said. “I have not yet contacted my parents after the SC verdict, but will soon be meeting them. Since I know my parents well, I want to give them some time to come out of their tension.”
She came here on a three-day leave and will start going to college from Tuesday. She started the interaction saying, “I am an ordinary girl from a very normal middle-class family, and hence, my answers and queries will be as normal as I am.” She refused to take many questions like organisations that worked on her conversion and the legality of her name. “I don’t want to create any more troubles for her due to all the controversies,” Shefin Jahan, her husband, added.
