The Supreme Court on Monday disapproved of the loud arguments of lawyer Dushyant Dave and objected to his accusation against BJP members that they were attempting to destroy communal harmony in Kerala by terming his clientShafin Jahan’s marriage to Akhila aka Hadiya ‘love jihad’.
Dave spared no one and targeted the Kerala high court judges for annulling the marriage, and entrusting Hadiya’s custody to her parents. He slammed the decision asking the NIA to probe alleged ‘love jihad’ despite there being no supervising retired SC judge as mandated by the SC order, besides faulting UP chief minister Yogi Aditya Nath for going to Kerala and “fuelling communal hatred”. He contrasted it with President Ram Nath Kovind’s speech eulogising the culture of accommodation in Kerala.
Dave’s arguments, in response to submissions of additional solicitor general Maninder Singh that the NIA had found a pattern in “young Hindu girls being brainwashed to convert to Islam and marry Muslims”, and the impatience shown in hearing the court’s view made a bench of CJI Dipak Misra and Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud stop the arguments midway.
The bench said it was looking for legal and logical answers to its primary question — whether the HC could annul a marriage in a father’s petition seeking to know the whereabouts of his daughter. “Instead of answering this straightforward question, you (Dave) are running here and there and bringing all kinds of persons into the case. The way you are going — commenting on judges, political personalities — is not what we expect from you,” it said.
