LAHORE, Feb 5: While denying reports of marrying Ayesha Siddiqui, an Indian girl based in Hyderabad, Pakistan cricket captain Shoaib Malik said on Tuesday that he would be filing a defamation case against her family, both in Pakistan and India.

Shoaib Malik told a press conference here allegations that he had ditched the Indian girl were “baseless”. Malik was accompanied by Imran Zafar, a close relative whom the Pakistan skipper has delegated to handle the matter.

Imran admitted that Malik had developed contacts with Ayesha through the internet and telephone in 2001. Later he even tried to meet Ayesha, visiting India for the purpose, but her family told him that the girl had gone to Saudi Arabia.

Then in 2005, Shoaib Malik went to India with the Pakistan team, and tried to see the girl once more, only to be told that she was in the United States.

But, Imran said, the shock came when “we learnt that Ayesha is not the girl whose photograph he (Malik) received through the Internet. This led Malik to cut all ties with her.”

Ayesha’s family claims that Malik had married her on June 3, 2002. The Nikah was performed by a religious leader from Sialkot, the skipper’s home town. The family claims it had been agreed, on Malik’s request, that the wedding be kept secret till an “appropriate time”.

But now they are asking for a divorce, calling the cricketer a “cheat”. However, Malik contends that in order to give a divorce there should have been a marriage in the first place.