Shoaib Malik married Sania Mirza in 2010, however he had previously married another woman, Ayesha Siddiqui, by telephone in 2002.
Former Pakistan cricket team captain Shoaib Malik astonished the sporting world when he released photos of his wedding to actress Sana Javed. The announcement verified rumours of his divorce with Indian tennis star Sania Mirza, which her family confirmed in a social media post the following day. However, few are aware that Sania was not Shoaib’s first wife. Sania and Shoaib married in 2010. They have a son named Izhaan Mirza Malik. However, Shoaib apparently married another woman, whom he had to divorce, before beginning a new life with the Indian tennis star.
A dispute emerged just before Shoaib’s wedding to Sania in 2010, when a woman named Ayesha Siddiqui from Hyderabad claimed to have married Shoaib in 2002.
While Shoaib rejected the charges, Ayesha, also known as Maha Siddiqui, decided to submit a police report and exhibit video evidence of their wedding.
According to reports, the two came to an agreement in which the Pakistani cricketer agreed to divorce Ayesha and pay her INR 15 crore in alimony.
— Shoaib (@TheDarkShobi23) January 20, 2024
The most intriguing aspect of Shoaib and Ayesha’s marriage was that it was a ‘telephonic nikah’. In an interview with the Times News Network, Shoaib discussed conducting a telephonic nikah without even seeing his bride. The player, who was only 20 years old at the time, had only a few photos of Ayesha with him, and the two spoke on the phone on a regular basis. But, not long after, Shoaib was duped into marrying Ayesha, who was not even the girl he saw in images.
While Ayesha kept making excuses and refusing to meet Shoaib, she told the cricketer in 2002 that she wanted to marry him right away because the news of their relationship was all over the media, making life tough for her family.
“This episode took place in 2002. Ayesha encouraged us to marry. I wanted to marry her, but I didn’t want to rush into it. For starters, I had never met her. She proposed that we do a telephone nikah immediately away. I couldn’t tell my parents about a telephone nikah because it was not how they intended me to marry.
I was only 20 years old at the time, and Ayesha was putting a lot of pressure on me to marry because she said her family was losing face in Hyderabad since word had spread that we were dating. One morning in June 2002, I strolled out of my house, went to a friend’s shop, and called. “I got a nikahnama and signed it, thinking the girl I was marrying was the one in the pictures,” Shoaib stated in the interview.
Shoaib realized in August 2005 that the female he was talking to on the phone was not the same as the one he had seen in images. When he challenged Ayesha about it, she also revealed the truth.
Shoaib considered distributing the pictures he had with him, but Ayesha advised him not to do so because the girl in the photographs was already married. Malik opted not to disclose the images because she feared it would ruin her life.
