Dr Zafar Hayat said that he met her when Dr. Shaheen joined Kanpur’s GSVM Medical College, and the two got married in 2003 and have two children. Former husband of Dr. Shaheen Shahid, the doctor arrested from Haryana’s Faridabad on November 10 in connection with a terror-related investigation, said he never imagined her involvement in any unlawful activity.
Dr. Shaheen, 43, once a government medical lecturer in Kanpur, is among those arrested for her alleged role in a terror module stretching from Kashmir to Delhi. Dr. Zafar Hayat, an ophthalmologist at KPM Hospital in Lucknow, said that he met her when Dr. Shaheen joined Kanpur’s GSVM Medical College, and the two got married in 2003 and have two children. “The first few years of our marriage were good,” he said. “The only difference between us was in our thinking — she wanted to go abroad, while I wanted to live in India. Shaheen often insisted that we should move to Australia or a European country,” he said. “One day, she suddenly left us. We divorced in 2015, and she never returned after that. There was never any conflict between us,” he added.
After their separation, he said, there was no contact between them. “Even during our marriage, I never felt she could be involved in anything wrong,” he added. Dr. Hayat said he has not yet spoken to his children about the developments. “When she left, our children were very young — one had just started school. The elder child was seven and the younger one was four. She never tried to reach out afterwards,” he said, adding, “I am raising them.”k
“Shaheen was a calm person, never discussed religion or ideology, and was deeply interested in her studies,” he added. Born and raised in the narrow lanes of Hata Mustafa Khan in Khandari Bazar, Lucknow, Shaheen was the daughter of Shahid Ansari, a retired staffer from the state health department. Investigators allege that Shaheen was living in Faridabad with Dr. Muzammil Ahmad Ganaie, one of the module’s key accused, and that the two were in a relationship, according to officials of the UP ATS. Her younger brother, Dr. Parvez Ansari, was arrested for links to the same network on Tuesday.
Police said Shahid was arrested from Lucknow and flown to Srinagar for custodial interrogation. The Jammu and Kashmir Police are probing whether she personally transported explosives recovered in Faridabad or acted as a logistical facilitator for the network. Her financial transactions, phone records and encrypted communications are being examined to determine if she was in contact with handlers abroad or had prior knowledge of the module’s plans, police said.
