Gudiya-Arif saga

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Arif and Gudiya: A big fat FREAK wedding

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All elements for a Greek tragedy were there: love, war, a long-lost husband and a pregnant woman torn between two men. And TV channels did make a tragedy of the private lives of three protagonists.

Soldier Arif Mohammed spent five years in a Pak prison, during which time his wife remarried, believing he was dead. But then he returned.

Sharia law was to decide whose wife Gudiyaa was until a TV channel – and the whole nation – got involved.

Gudiya, her two husbands and the village elders were persuaded to appear in a studio in the presence of Islamic scholars, to make a decision on which husband to stay with and what to do with the child.

The mock village council, or panchayat, decided that Gudiya would return to Arif and that the child would be raised in his house for a few years.

It was for the first time in the history of Indian television that a personal issue had been debated and decided on television.

- Saurabh Azad