Why is the past tense used here instead of the present?

Question

Let me talk about this sentence.

A girl is currently married to a cricketer of another country. When a reporter asked someone about her, he would have said that "she has married that country's cricketer, hence she is no more of our country now. She is a daughter-in-law of Pakistan."

But while reporting this in a newspaper, the reporter wrote:

Sania was born in Maharashtra and settled in Hyderabad only later and, hence, is a "non-local", he told reporters here and sought to dub her as "daughter-in-law" of Pakistan, pointing out that she was married to that country's cricketer Shoaib Malik.

My question is why has the author used past simple tense in this? Why didn’t he use "is" instead of "was"?

Reference link:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Pakistans-daughter-in-law-Sania-Mirza-lacks-credentials-to-be-Telangana-brand-ambassador-BJP/articleshow/38965740.cms

Answer 1

They use the past tense because in reporting or retelling things, we retain the tense of the reporting verb in the account reported:

She assures me she knows Russian.

Here the reporting verb is in the present - assures, so the the same tense is used for "knows."

She assured me that she knew Russian.

Here "assured" is a past form, so "knew" is preferred. Similarly, in your story, everything is told in the past tense, so "was married" is used instead of "is married."