Veena Malik's fight to keep her children close

Actor talks decade-long custody battle

Veena Malik's Instagram has become a gallery of love for her new beau Shehryar Chaudhry, for whom she cannot stop singing praises. However, the celebrity's journey to joy has not been an easy one.

In an interview with Mishi Khan, the Rangeela actor revisited some old wounds that emerged around the time when she divorced her former husband, with whom she has two kids.

"When it comes to my kids, the amount of problems that I've gone through in my life, those are absolutely not easy for one person to handle," she said. "I had decided long ago that if my past relationship were to take away all my money, then so be it, as long as things worked out for me. But they didn't."

"But when I saw that this relationship was putting my children's lives at stake, that was when I packed my bags, took both of my kids, and decided to fight back. They're my biggest inspiration," she fondly spoke.

So far, Veena has fought four custody cases for her children. "A mother is her kids' natural guardian. But the things that I have been through... I feel like I'm the only mother in the world who has won custody of her children four times, and still the cases are going on. Why? Because when you end up with a narcissist, this is what you go through."

Having endured this battle for a decade now, Veena also sympathises with women who are in a similar position as hers yet cannot afford to put up a fight. She mentioned that even her friends laud her for the feat, as the limit to which a woman can tolerate the intense ordeal might only stretch so far.

She further shared that she got ahold of her kids' custody in 2017, right after her "paper marriage" was annulled. At first, the negotiation went smoothly, which encouraged her to allow her kids to travel to Dubai with their father and spend two weeks with him. However, this escalated into a years-long struggle between the two parties after her ex-husband's refusal to send the kids back.

"Thankfully, what I've observed is that Allah rewards you generously," she eventually mused. "My kids are the biggest support that I have, along with my parents and the rest of my family. To put it into perspective for everyone out there, it takes one leap to end up in a well but a thousand to climb your way out."