THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Hadiya’s father K.M. Ashokan finds it difficult to come to terms with his daughter’s changing opinions, telling the Justices in the Supreme Court that she has been closest to her father and three days later at the Salem college despising “the people with whom she spent the past six months”
“What does all this mean?”, asks Ashokan.
He told DC that Hadiya was too perturbed by the developments in her life that she often contradicted herself. Hadiya would keep on changing her opinions but apparently remained steadfast on the question of conversion and marriage, which he thought owed to extraneous influence.
The parents returned to their home, Devi Krupa, at TV Puram in Kottayam, accompanied by police, late on Tuesday night after the high-voltage drama in the Supreme Court. Neighbours found the father composed but Ponnamma broke down seeing the local crowd, gathered to console them.
Neighbour Vijimol, 35, told DC that she is apprehensive about Ponnamma’s condition because she has health issues and “now she is almost on the brink”.
“They call Hadiya, ‘Kochu’. The neighbourhood prays for reconciliation and hopes the parents get back their daughter. We have no idea about Shafin Jahan’s alleged terror links so we can’t be judgemental about the conversion and the marriage”, says Vijimol.
Ponnamma had offered a special offering of gruel at the neighbourhood local Cheruparambu temple a few days before the family left for New Delhi. But Vijimol was quick to add that Hadiya being a devout Muslim after the conversion might not have taken the gruel.
About the father, she said it was more than 16 months since he had attended duty as a driver at the Armed Forces Tribunal in Fort Kochi.
He had retired from the Army during 1996. The family’s sole income used to be his monthly pension of Rs 20, 000, with which he had tried to meet all expenses, including Hadiya’s tuition and hostel expenses, and that too without pawning the scarce family assets.
