Hxz v Nmx

Hearing date: 3 April 2025

Approved Judgment

This judgment was handed down remotely at 10.30am on 14 April 2025 by circulation to the parties or their representatives by e-mail and by release to the National Archives.

DEPUTY HIGH COURT JUDGE Aidan Eardley KC

Aidan Eardley KC:

Introduction

At a return date hearing on 3 April 2025 I continued until trial the interim injunction granted by Mr Justice Ritchie on 13 March 2025 and made other orders. These are my reasons. In order to keep them to a reasonable length, I gratefully adopt passages from the public judgment of Ritchie J [2025] EWHC 697 (KB) where appropriate. I have also produced a private version of this judgment, containing detail that could not be included in a public judgment without undermining the purpose of the injunction.

The Claimant was represented by Sara Mansoori KC and Kirsten Sjøvoll. The Defendant represents herself. I was aware of the inequality of arms and indeed, based on the evidence the Defendant submitted concerning her medical conditions and life experiences, I regard her as a vulnerable party within the meaning of CPR PD 1A. I sought to conduct the hearing in a way that reflected this assessment.

The issues I had to determine were as follows:

(1) Should the return date hearing be in private and should anonymity be preserved?

(2) Should the existing injunction be discharged?

(3) Should the injunction be continued (or reimposed)?

(4) Should the Defendant be ordered to destroy/deliver up the naked images of the Claimant that she holds?

(5) Should the Defendant be ordered to delete certain social media posts?

(6) Should there be restrictions on access to the Court file?

(7) Should time for service of the Particulars of Claim be extended?

There were also some issues that the Defendant sought to raise but which I declined to deal with. The hearing papers included an unsealed Application Notice filed by the Defendant seeking a non-molestation order under the Family Law Act 1996, and an unsealed Part 8 Claim Form. A draft order she submitted contained a non-molestation order, a declaration recognising her alleged marriage to the Claimant and associated financial obligations, an order for compensation for personal injury and emotional distress, and an order that the Claimant be referred to the criminal authorities for investigation.

I refused to deal with any of these matters. I could not tell whether the Application Notice and Part 8 Claim Form had actually been issued by the Court. In any event, it would have been inappropriate and impossible to deal with any of these matters at the hearing. Indeed some of them would appear to be matters that are usually dealt with in the Family Court, not the King's Bench Division. If the Court has issued or eventually issues the Defendant's Application Notice or Claim Form, they will need to be placed before a Judge for directions. The Defendant is free to contact the police herself (and says she has done so). The injunction allows for this.

Background and recent developments

The Claimant's account of the background to this claim is set out in the judgment of Ritchie J at [12]–[30].

I do not need to recite everything that has occurred since 13 March 2025, but Ms Mansoori drew my attention to the following.

After service of the injunction, the Defendant removed from her social media account two posts which referred to and contained pictures of the Claimant. She then reinstated these posts and left them on public view despite an objection from the Claimant's solicitors on 31 March 2025. The Defendant also continued to make further posts on social media, three of which, the Claimant contends, refer to him in terms that amount to further misuse of his private information or harassment.

On 31 March 2025, the Defendant emailed the Court attaching a letter she had sent to a regulatory body in connection with an ongoing consultation in which she refers to being the defendant in a case and gives details of the case in terms that match the present case. Also attached was a consultation response form, in her own name, and containing details of this case (without expressly identifying herself as a party to it). She did however indicate that the response should be treated confidentially and that the regulator should not refer to it publicly. A further document that was attached to this email to the Court was a document headed “Defence submission” with the title of this case and bearing her own name. It appears to be a submission to the Court making certain points that she had also made to the regulatory body. It is not clear whether this third document had also been sent to the regulatory body. In the Defendant's favour, I assume that she sent it only to the Court.

Electronic hearing bundles were sent to the Defendant on 31 March 2025. The Defendant appeared concerned that the Claimant's solicitors might not provide her with hard-copy bundles. I was shown an email she sent to a printing company the same day, apparently attaching an electronic copy of the first hearing bundle. The message said, “…if they refuse I will come to you to print it so please don't print because it will cost me a lot of money to print all of this papers they are sending…”. In the event, the Claimant's solicitors did provide hard copy bundles. The correspondence I have seen suggests this was on 1 April 2025.

The Defendant's position

The Court now has the benefit of evidence and submissions from the Defendant. She filed a witness statement of her own with a substantial exhibit and statements from 3 other individuals. Prior to this, she had also sent the Claimant's solicitors a document headed “statement of events” and many documents that she says support her account. The Defendant also filed a skeleton and addressed me at length orally. I have considered all this material, along with the responsive evidence of the Claimant. It is helpful to summarise this under the following headings. It is not necessary to go into every detail.

Naked images of the Claimant

The Defendant says that she has several pictures of the Claimant naked, which she took while in Asia in June 2024. She says that they shared lots of naked pictures with each other during their “marriage” and that the Claimant has naked photos of her as well. She says that she sent the Claimant one picture of him naked, attached to an email in March 2025, but has not shared any others and has no intention of doing so.

The Islamic marriage

The Defendant is adamant that she and the Claimant went through a valid Islamic marriage ceremony on 29 July 2023. She says that, to be valid, it did not need to be registered or recorded in writing: it sufficed that it was conducted by an imam in private in the presence of at least 2 witnesses. She rejects the suggestion that she has been inconsistent about the date of the wedding.

On the Defendant's account, the Claimant told her that her financial problems would disappear if she married him and she eventually agreed. She did so, she says, because her religious and cultural norms forbid sexual relationships outside marriage. She says that he proposed to her and gave her a wedding ring at a dinner at a London hotel, in the presence of about 10 others. She says that the Claimant then booked her into another London hotel and, on 29 July 2023, they went through the ceremony in private. She says this was organised by the Claimant's associate and that he and another named person were the witnesses. She also named the imam.

The Defendant did not serve witness statements from either of the wedding witnesses nor anyone who attended the dinner at which the Claimant allegedly proposed. However, she pointed to a number of documents which she says support her case. These included a photograph of her ring and photographs of her dressed in apparently ceremonial costume standing with the Claimant and some other people. She also showed the Court two Whatsapp messages sent by the Claimant to two of her sisters on the occasions of their birthdays in which he refers to himself as their “brother in law” and the Defendant's “husband”; and texts between the Claimant and the Defendant's son, in which he addresses him as “son”. She showed me a money transfer receipt dated 30 July 2023, which she said showed the Claimant's associate paying the imam, though the document did not state what the transfer was for.

The Defendant also contends that the marriage agreement provided for a dowry (‘Mahr’) both at the time of the marriage and in the event of a divorce. She says that the dowry due at the time of the marriage consisted in the Claimant's agreement to provide her with a car at a cost of many thousands of pounds; and that, in the event of divorce, he agreed to pay her another very large sum. She says that during their “marriage” the Claimant provided her an allowance of several thousand pounds per month in cash and also made other substantial transfers to her bank account.

The Claimant repeated his evidence that the photos of the alleged wedding were in fact taken at a business dinner the Defendant had arranged. He says that the “wedding ring” was an artificial ring that came from a number of samples that he had brought over from Asia because the Defendant had said she wanted to start a jewellery business. He accepts that he paid for the Defendant to stay in the London hotel in July 2023, but that was because she had told him that she had been attacked in her home,...