Gudiya with Mohammed Arif after he returned from a Pakistan prison. (AFP file picture)

Lucknow, Jan. 8: After Gudiya’s death, the two husbands who had fought over her at a panchayat of clerics have again begun a duel, this time for custody of her 15-month-old son.

Again, the tug of war has reached drawing rooms, thanks to a TV channel.

The child, Matin, was fathered by Gudiya’s second husband, Taufiq. But he was born a month after Gudiya was “awarded” by a panchayat of clerics, live on TV, to first husband Mohammed Arif in September 2004.

Arif has now moved a Shariat court claiming guardianship of the child, but Taufiq believes it’s his turn to win this time.

A TV channel dramatised the controversy, till then at a fledgling stage, a few days ago by bringing the two men face to face.

Apparently reluctant to “lose” the duel with millions watching, both seemed to harden their stand through the debate.

Arif reminded Taufiq that, before the panchayat 16 months ago, he had declared he had nothing to say about the then unborn child (Arif himself had agreed to accept the baby only when Gudiya put her foot down).

“If you are so serious about the child, why did you not stake claim earlier?” Arif asked.

“How can you ask for an assurance on a child not yet born?” Taufiq shot back.

It was the mental scars from the earlier TV reality show, which paraded her private shame before the nation, that was at least partly to blame for Gudiya’s death last week at a Delhi hospital, her family believes.

The 22-year-old succumbed to septicaemia three months after a miscarriage, but her parents said she had never recovered from the public humiliation and had been ill and depressed since then.

That day’s drama took place after Arif, a soldier, returned from a Pakistani jail five years after being declared a Kargil martyr and staked claim to Gudiya, by then married to Taufiq and eight months-pregnant with Matin.

Two days after Gudiya’s death, her father Imamuddin raised the subject of Matin’s future at Arif’s home in Mundali, Meerut. He offered to bring up the child.

But Arif said: “He reminds me of Gudiya. Let him stay; I’ll look after him.”

Within a couple of days, Taufiq ? who lives in Pataudi, Haryana ? emerged on the scene and claimed the child by virtue of being his biological father.

Arif is banking on emotion. “Matin came to me with Gudiya following a panchayat ruling. He is inseparable from her memory. She is dead but Matin was born at my home and I have been taking care of him. He is mine. I’ll raise him to be a soldier.”

At their home in Kalaunda, Meerut, Gudiya’s parents are still worried. “What if both Arif and Taufiq remarry and abandon all their promises?” Imamuddin asked.

Muslim clerics acknowledge that the Shariat court has a tricky case on its hands but feel that prima facie, Taufiq has a stronger case.

“He is the rightful guardian because he is the biological father,” said Kamal Farooqi, member of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Maulana Mehmood Madni, general secretary of the Jamiyat-e-Ulema-e-Hind, a social organisation, tried to think out of the box.

“The court may try out a rotational guardianship, too,” he said.