It was a wild goose chase for the dozens of media personnel in Hyderabad, after word spread that the wedding of tennis star Sania Mirza with Pakistani cricketer Shoaib Malik was to be performed on Friday itself.
The advancement of the wedding, actually slated for April 15, had galvanised the press corps, which had stationed itself in front of Sania's house to get a ‘quote' or a ‘byte' from the family members. The confusion cleared only by evening after her family members sent text messages to news channels which went on running scrolls about the marriage taking place on Friday.
Sania's father Imran Mirza made a single-line statement: “All wedding ceremonies will begin only on April 13.”
The proposed wedding of Sania and Shoaib had been mired in controversy after a Hyderabadi woman, Ayesha Siddiqui, claimed that the cricketer had already married her and that he could marry Sania only after divorcing her first. Shoaib's denial of the claim led to registration of a criminal case against him and his passport was seized by the police.
The controversy subsided after community elders intervened to convince both families to agree to an amicable settlement, under which Shoaib ‘divorced' Ayesha.
Friday's confusion over the wedding date arose after a popular Urdu daily carried a story and news channels and agencies picked up the story leading to a media ‘hysteria.'
