Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan's marriage with Bushra Bibi was held against the principles of Shariah law, the cleric, who performed the Nikah, said on Wednesday. The cleric, Mufti Mohammad Saeed, made the testimony before a court during the hearing of a petition seeking legal action against Khan for marrying his present wife while she was reportedly on Iddat, Pakistan's daily Dawn reported on Thursday.
Iddat is a 130-day period of waiting or seclusion that a Muslim woman must observe after the death or divorce or any other form of separation from her husband.
Imran Khan, the chairman of Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf, married Bushra in February 2018. Mufti Saeed said he had close relations with Khan and was a part of the PTI's core committee. The cleric said Khan asked him, on January 1, 2018, to solemnise his Nikah with Bushra Bibi in Lahore. Khan took Mufti Saeed to a house in Defence Society and there the cleric met the relatives of both Bushra Bibi and the PTI chief. "I obtained, from both sides, sundry details before performing the Nikah. I also asked her about her first marriage and divorce," Mufti Saeed said as per Dawn.
The cleric said a woman accompanying Bushra Bibi introduced herself as her sister and assured him that all requirements for the marriage under Shariah were complete. He then solemnised the Nikah in January. However, the report said, Mufti Saeed recalled that Khan contacted him again in February 2018, with a request to perform the Nikah with Bushra Bibi afresh as the first one was against the principles of Shariah.
"I was told that the Nikah was solemnised during Bushra Bibi's Iddat as she had been divorced in November 2017. But there was a 'prediction' that the PTI chairman will become prime minister if he marries Bushra on Jan 1, 2018," the cleric reportedly said in his testimony.
According to Dawn, the cleric alleged that Khan and Bushra deliberately entered into an "illegal and un-Islamic" union for the sake of "a mere prediction" as the former was convinced that he would ascent to the Prime Minister’s office if he got married on New Year's Day in 2018.