Meet Ayesha Siddiqui, 1st wife of Sania Mirza’s ex-husband Shoaib Malik with whom he had a ‘telephonic nikah’

Shoaib Malik, the former captain of the Pakistan cricket team, shocked everyone by posting pictures from his wedding to actress Sana Javed in 2024. The speculations of his divorce from Indian tennis player Sania Mirza were dispelled by this revelation, which her family later verified on social media the next day. Sania was not Shoaib's first wife, though, as many people might not be aware. In 2010, the couple tied the knot, and they have a kid called Izhaan Mirza Malik. According to reports, Shoaib was previously married to someone else before starting a new chapter with the Indian tennis player.

A Hyderabadi woman named Ayesha Siddiqui claimed to have married Shoaib in 2002, sparking a dispute just before Shoaib was scheduled to wed Sania in 2010.

Ayesha, now known as Maha Siddiqui, decided to submit a police complaint and provide video proof of their wedding, despite Shoaib's denial of these claims.

According to later reports, the two came to an agreement whereby the Pakistani cricket player had to divorce Ayesha and give her INR 15 crore in alimony.

This 'telephonic nikah' was the most interesting part of Shoaib and Ayesha's marriage. Shoaib revealed that he conducted a telephone nikah without ever meeting his bride in an interview with Times News Network. He only had a few photos of Ayesha when he was twenty, and they frequently spoke on the phone. Shortly after, though, Shoaib was tricked into marrying Ayesha, who was not the girl he thought she was in the pictures.

Even though Ayesha kept making excuses and avoiding meeting Shoaib, in 2002 she told the cricket player that she wanted to marry him immediately because their relationship was generating media attention and creating problems for her family.

"This episode happened in 2002. Ayesha wanted us to get married. While I definitely wanted to marry her, I didn't want to rush into it. For one, I hadn't met her. She suggested that we could do a telephone nikah right away. There was no way I could tell my parents about a telephone nikah, because it's not the way they wanted me to get married. I was just 20 then, and under a lot of pressure from Ayesha to get married as she was saying that her family was losing face in Hyderabad as word had got around that we were courting. I walked out of my house one morning in June 2002, and went to my friend's shop and called from there. I got a nikahnama, signed it, thinking the girl I was marrying was the one in the photographs," Shoaib said in the interview.

The female Shoaib had been talking to on the phone was not the same as the one he had seen in the photos, he learned in August 2005. Ayesha admitted the truth when he challenged her about it.

Ayesha advised Shoaib against releasing the pictures he had, stating that the female in photos was already married. In the end, Malik decided against it because she was worried that making the photos public might harm her life.

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