Maneka confirms Nikah story broken by The News in March 2018

KARACHI: Khawar Maneka has said that the marriage between Bushra Bibi and Imran Khan took place a month and a half after he had divorced Bushra Bibi, confirming Umar Cheema’s story in The News in March 2018.

During his interview with Shahzeb Khanzada, Khawar Farid Maneka addressed the story broken by Umar Cheema; the story had said that Bushra Bibi had gotten married to former prime minister Imran Khan in January 2018 when she was still in ‘iddat’.

On the controversy of the date of the divorce, Maneka said that his and Bushra Bibi’s divorce date was November 14, 2017. The marriage between Imran Khan and Bushra Bibi took place on January 1, 2018. Maneka said he was unaware of the marriage at the time: “My children and I were not aware of this marriage [and] when Geo and The News broke the news of the marriage, I denied it.”

Khawar Maneka said that the marriage between Bushra Bibi and Imran Khan took place a month and a half after he had divorced Bushra Bibi, essentially acknowledging Umar Cheema’s story that the period of iddat had not been completed when Bushra Bibi married the PTI chairman in January 2018.

Khanzada reminded Maneka that at the time both Cheema and Jang/Geo were trolled and criticized and in fact Maneka and Bushra Bibi’s son Musa Maneka had refuted this claim. Maneka agreed that this had happened and that Umer Cheema had in fact called him up and told him that he wanted to ask a personal question about “my relationship with Bushra Bibi. I told him we were separated. He heard that and hung up. After that, news broke of the marriage. Two videos had come out after that: one my son Musa’s of January 8, 2018 and the other that was an earlier video from January 1, 2018 in which also we denied -- I denied too -- that anything of the sort had happened”.

On being asked why then he had attacked Jang/The News on having broken this story, and had even testified to Imran Khan’s character and defended his ex wife, and said that he would take legal action against Jang/The News if it continued with such reporting, Maneka said he had defended his former wife because he and his children “were completely unaware of the marriage” and that he always felt that the relationship of pir and murshid was a relationship of reverence.