After performing this political somersault, the flamboyant maverick MLA secretly married the Muslim boy Jakir Hussain alias Jacky, an unknown face who has been lucky to hit the media headlines. When the local newspapers and cable channels began to expose her second marriage with photographs of ‘nikah’ in the presence of the controversial minister of border area development of Assam, Siddeque Ahmed during the end of April this year, Rumi Nath made appearances with vermillion on her forehead and her two year old daughter Hriddhi on her lap to dismiss the media reports as ‘false and fabricated’ and the photographs with Jacky and Siddeque as ‘superimposed’. She even threatened to sue the media.

However, the media in hot pursuit of the MLA began to dig many skeletons out of the cupboards notwithstanding her persistent denials. The MLA had even dared to visit the historic Hindu temple of Nrimata of Goddess Parbati and God Mahadev in her constituency along with Rakesh Singh, her first husband and the baby on her lap on May 13th and offered prayers to show that all the stories of her marriage to a Muslim boy were ‘gossip and rumours’.

However, despite all her ‘cosmetic assertions’, facts came out with clinching evidence that Rumi Nath had embraced Islam on April 13th, 2012 by marrying Jakir Hussain on the date without divorcing her first husband, Rakesh Kumar Singh.

The electorate of her constituency, Borkhola, was the first to react angrily and accused her of betraying them. They had voted for her as a Hindu wife and not as Reshma Sultana alias Rubaiya, her converted name. According to them, she was like an absconder since she had eloped to Tripura to register her marriage with Jakir. They demanded her disqualification as an MLA and said that she had lost the moral and constitutional right to represent them.

Her visit to the Nrimata temple enraged the President of the temple, Nani Gopal Dey and the Secretary Benu Bhusan Roy for concealing her conversion to Islam and thereby defiling the holy place on May 13th, 2012 which according to them amounted to ‘blasphemy’ and hurting the religious sentiments and feelings of the Hindus. They along with five other members of the temple committee filed a complaint before the Court of the Chief Judicial Magistrate of Silchar on June 6th to forward the case to the officer in charge of Borkhola police station for investigation and to register a case against Rumi Nath and initiate legal proceedings against her.

Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad and Mahila Samannay Mancha have raised the Constitutional and democratic propriety of Rumi Nath’s continuance as the representative of the people of Borkhola for her unbecoming conduct and behaviour which reflected her ‘demented mind’ and the 191 (b) clause of the Constitution of the country disqualified her membership of the Assembly. Further under clause 192 of the Constitution, the Governor of a state on the basis of public complaint is the competent authority to decide on the continuation of a member of the house on the ground of Constitutional propriety. Besides this, in a significant judgement by the Supreme Court as referred to by the Adhivakta Parishad in the matter of the Union of India Vs Association for Democratic Reforms case 2002 as well as the People’s Union for Civil Liberties Vs the Union of India case 2003, it has been held that, “Disinformation, misinformation, non information all equally create an uninformed citizenry which would make democracy a farce. A well informed voter is the foundation of the democratic structure. The right of a voter to know the bio-data of a candidate is the foundation of democracy. The voters have the right to know the antecedents of the candidates contesting election.” By hiding the facts about her second marriage to a Muslim boy, both Adhivakta Parishad and Mahila Samannay Mancha have accused Rumi Nath of fraud and deceit towards her electorate and called for her immediate removal from the State Assembly.

Bharatiya Janata Party of Barak Valley in a memorandum addressed to the Governor of Assam, J B Patnaik has asked for stern action against Dr. Rumi Nath and Siddeque Ahmed, minister of cooperative and border area development, the latter having abetted to the illegal marriage and their immediate dismissal from MLA ship and minister ship respectively. Vishwa Hindu Parishad and Association of Nath Yugi Sammelani, the community to which Rumi Nath belongs has demanded a social and political boycott of the MLA. They have also threatened Rumi Nath not to step into her constituency. After being in the limelight of the media for the last two months, the whereabouts of the MLA are not known, raising many interesting and intriguing questions in the public mind.

Interestingly, before Rakesh Singh reacted to her allegations against him, Rumi Nath’s father, Here Troilakya Bhushan Nath, businessman and owner of a leading travel agency and her mother Ratna Nath described her accusations as ‘wild, baseless and ridiculous’ and told the media that their daughter has lost her mental balance.

Dr. Rakesh Singh had filed a case in Silchar court under section 494,497,380 and 34 vide case NO. ing 867/  2012, accusing her of infidelity. Earlier, when Rumi Nath eloped with Jacky on May 22nd, Rakesh had lodged a FIR with the police suspecting that his wife had been abducted. It is to be noted that after 11 days of a game of hide and seek, Rumi and Jacky resurfaced at the MLA hostel at Dispur and filed a suit against Rakesh Singh alleging that he subjected her to physical and mental torture and even threatened her with dire consequences. She also alleged that due to the ill treatment of her first husband she had attempted suicide four times to liberate herself from him.

Interestingly, before Rakesh Singh reacted to her allegations against him, Rumi Nath’s father, Here Troilakya Bhushan Nath, businessman and owner of a leading travel agency and her mother Ratna Nath described her accusations as ‘wild, baseless and ridiculous’ and told the media that their daughter has lost her mental balance. Rakesh Singh’s counsels taking the texts of the interview given by Rumi and Jacky to a Guwahati based TV channel, confessing their marriage in spite of the fact that her marriage with Rakesh was still valid and that neither of them had sought divorce, charged Rumi with ‘infidelity’.

Rumi Nath’s marriage to Jacky took place at the residence of Md Abu Bakkar Siddeque, former Zila Parishad member of Karimganj district in the presence of Siddeque Ahmed, border area development minister, Nazia Yasmin Mazumder, State General Secretary of Majila Congress and her ‘nikah’ and her conversion was conducted by Moulana Nazrul Haque and Moulana Usman Ali on May 22nd.

Jyoti Lal Chowdhury