Shoaib gets ‘freedom’ over phone

Ayesha Siddiqui’s mother Farissa in Hyderabad after the compromise was reached between her daughter and Shoaib Malik on Wednesday. (Above) Sania with Shoaib on Monday. (AP, Reuters)

Hyderabad, April 7: Married over landline, divorce via cellphone.
Shoaib Malik is at last free for Sania Mirza. But the tennis star will have to be content being the cricketer’s second wife, after all.
A murky eight-year saga of allegations and denials ended today after Shoaib formally divorced Ayesha Siddiqui this morning, finally acknowledging that he had indeed married the Hyderabad girl.
Sources said the Pakistani all-rounder dialled Ayesha’s landline number from his mobile to utter the triple talaq.
The 9am telephone talaq, which ended their June 2002 phone wedding, came after nightlong efforts at a compromise by a team of 15 mediators who included local qazis, relatives and friends of both families.
“I intervened after friends from Delhi urged me to bring about a compromise as both (Sania and Ayesha) were Hyderabad girls,” said Andhra Pradesh minorities minister Ahmadullah Syed Mohammed, one of those who played a role in making Shoaib accept that he had married Ayesha nearly eight years ago.
Till yesterday, Shoaib had refused to accept the marriage and kept insisting that he hadn’t met her and that there was no question of giving Ayesha the divorce she had been demanding. His denials had prompted the girl’s family to file cheating and harassment charges and police had impounded Shoaib’s passport on Monday.
The compromise was announced by Shams Babbar, the family doctor of the Siddiquis, and local politician Abid Rasool Khan after they received the talaqnama Shoaib had signed and sent to Pakistan for attestation by clerics.
Shoaib accepted all the claims made by Ayesha as his first wife and agreed to give her a divorce. He also offered her Rs 5,000 for each month of iddat to be observed by her for three months.
“At last justice has been done to my daughter and she is very happy that her word has been respected and honoured,” Ayesha’s mother Farissa told a media conference she addressed with Khan and Babbar. They also said the cases filed against Shoaib would be withdrawn.
A joint press conference by Sania and Shoaib, scheduled at the Mirza home in the evening, was, however, cancelled as neither wanted to face the media, sources said.
But what prompted Shoaib to admit that he had married Ayesha?
Police sources said the scene changed after Ayesha yesterday submitted more evidence of her association with Shoaib, including the clothes she claimed to have worn when she met him at a local hotel a few years ago.
It appears the city police told Sania’s father Imran Mirza to work out a compromise. Some of the mediators said Babbar, the family doctor of the Siddiquis, produced a certificate of an abortion Ayesha had which proved to be the clincher.
Police sources said passport entries had shown that Shoaib was in Hyderabad on the dates mentioned by Ayesha in her complaint and that forensic tests had confirmed most of Ayesha’s charges. “There were several twists and gaps in his written and oral statements,” a source said.
“If he had continued to reject Ayesha, it could have meant arrest and remand in judicial custody,” said a police official.
Sources close to Sania’s family said community elders were upset with her comments about Ayesha. “Ask anyone about them, they will tell you the truth,” Sania had said.
A prominent Sunni leader and a former judge said Sania had no right to insult other Muslim women. “We all know who is in the wrong and who is right.”
On Monday night, some Muslim leaders had called on Sania’s father and advised that he shouldn’t go ahead with the scheduled April 15 wedding in such a vicious atmosphere.
The senior Mirza later told Shoaib to put an end to the controversy. “Let us not give room for any more public outcry as the wedding is hardly a week away,” Imran is said to have told Shoaib.
But it was Sania who didn’t want a compromise. “If Shoaib crumbles under pressure, I will be his second wife,” she is said to have told her parents.
Family friends said there was a heated argument at the dinner table last night at the Mirza home, with Sania and Shoaib arguing for hours and the elders insisting on a compromise.
In Islamabad, a PTI report quoted Pakistani rights activist Ansar Burney as saying that Shoaib should “say sorry to Ayesha and the people and media of India and Pakistan as his actions (had) hurt relations between the two countries”.