Malik and Mirza try to clear up marriage muddle

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

Monday, 05 Apr, 2010

HYDERABAD: Hyderabad police have questioned former Pakistan captain Shoaib Malik ahead of his planned marriage to Indian tennis star Sania Mirza about another woman claiming to be the cricket player’s wife.

Malik has been asked not to leave India while the police investigate, senior police official A.K. Khan said on Monday.

In her complaint, filed on Sunday, Ayesha Siddique alleged that Malik married her in June 2002 and she accused him of subjecting her to cruelty and harassment by denying that the wedding took place and by trying to marry another Indian woman.

Police visited the home of Mirza in Hyderabad, the capital of southern Andhra Pradesh state, where Malik was staying and recorded his statement on Monday, Stephan Ravindra, a deputy commissioner of police said.

Police are investigating complaints of criminal intimidation, cheating, fraud and harassment for dowry against the Pakistani cricketer, Ravindra told The Associated Press. Police also questioned Siddique.

After speaking to the police, Malik and Mirza appeared before reporters and said they were going ahead with the wedding on April 15.

“I am very upset (by the controversy),” Mirza said. “It’s very painful for my family. But we are happy that we are getting married.

“I have full faith in him. We know what the truth is. It will come out.”

Malik said he would stay in India to clear his name.

“I am cooperating with the police. I have done nothing wrong,” he said, adding that Siddique should prove her claim in a court.

Malik admitted in a statement released by his agent Salman Ahmed that he signed a nikahnama (marriage certificate) eight years ago but claimed he was duped.

After developing a friendship on the internet, Malik said in the statement he married a woman named Ayesha over the telephone in June 2002 but he believed he had been deceived by another woman claiming to be Ayesha Siddique.

“I wasn’t happy doing this because I hadn’t told my parents,” he said. “There was a lot of pressure on me from Ayesha.”

Malik said Siddique introduced herself as his fan living in Saudi Arabia, but would turn down requests to meet, and instead sent photographs.

“I was made to believe the girl in the photograph was the one I was speaking to,” he said. “The truth is, I haven’t, to this day, met the girl in the photographs Ayesha sent me.”

He said when he visited Hyderabad in 2002, he was told she’d gone to Saudi to work, and said her parents told him Siddique had put on weight and wouldn’t meet him until she lost weight. He said she avoided him during two more visits to Hyderabad.

Malik said he was astonished when his brother-in-law showed him a photograph in 2005 in which a teacher in Saudi was claiming to be his wife.

“I was aghast ... the woman in it was the person I called Maha “apa” (elder sister) while I visited Hyderabad,” Malik said. He confronted apa and told her that he didn’t ever want to speak to her again.

Malik said he was cheated and “I was wrongly made to believe that the pictures Ayesha had sent me were of the girl I was marrying.”

“I feel terrible about the mess, created by a family that has caused great grief to my own people and the family of my bride-to-be.”

Siddique said she has a copy of the nikahnama, signed by Malik and two witnesses, issued by Pakistani authorities in Malik’s hometown of Sialkot in June 2002.

Farooq Hasan, a lawyer representing Ayesha Siddique in Pakistan, said in Lahore he will soon be filing a case against Malik in Pakistan’s civil and criminal courts.

“We will also try to stop Malik’s marriage with Sania Mirza,” Hasan said. “If the courts in Pakistan asked, Ayesha Siddique will also travel to Pakistan and appear before the courts.

“The courts in Pakistan will decide about the authentication of nikahnama.”

Malik, who has been banned from representing Pakistan for a year due to infighting within the team during a recent tour of Australia, arrived in Hyderabad last week from Pakistan to work out arrangements for his wedding to Mirza.

Mirza broke off a previous engagement this year before announcing her plans to marry Malik.

The news of the Malik-Mirza wedding plans sparked instant news coverage in the region because neighboring Pakistan and India are longtime rivals, and have fought three wars since their independence from Britain in 1947.