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 yesterday.
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 woman.
PHOTO: AFP
Police visited Mirza’s home in Hyderabad where Malik was staying and recorded his statement yesterday, Stephan Ravindra, a deputy commissioner of police said.
Police are investigating complaints of criminal intimidation, cheating, fraud and harassment for dowry against the cricketer, he said.
After speaking to the police, Malik and Mirza appeared before reporters and said they were going ahead with their wedding.
“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,” he said.
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 that he signed a 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.
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.
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