Is father’s consent required for a valid marriage in Shariah if he is cruel and uncooperative?

As-salaamu-alaikum! my name is shahvez. i m muslim sunni boy belong to saharanpur u.p. i used to love a muslim sunni girl . her name is shumaila parveen. by caste we are sheikh idrissi and shumaila is mughal multani lohar. financially we are sound. and lookwise also we deserve each other.our families used to know each other for the past five years. we had very good relations. myself and shumaila fell in love about same time and we started talking to each other on phone and sometimes we used to see each other. later her family came to know about our relation and they opposed it coz of our caste. myself and shumaila tried to persuade them(shumaila’s parents) but they did not accept our relation and opposed to our marriage. my elder brother went to shumaila’s father for marriage proposal but he insulted my brother and rejected his offer. shumaila requested her parents so many times for marriage with me. so many times she went on hunger strike but they said that we will consider her dead but in any case they will not allow her to marry me. after trying everything then one day we married according to shariah. in our marriage my maternal uncle was vakil and my elder brother and my cousin brother were witnesses. hafiz sahab solemnized our nikaah according to shariah. all vakil,witnesses and hafiz sahab were sane(aaqil) and adult(baligh). then shumaila went back to her home.later when we came to know that her parents were so rudely against our marriage then one day shumaila left her home forever.she was my legal wife at that time and we went to high court to get protection from her parents. they wanted to kill us anyhow. high court granted us protection and we came back and started living happily. then her parents tried so many things to break our marriage like sending police and forcing us to take divorce. when they failed in everything then they sued a false and forged case against myself,shumaila and my family. in which they made a forged nikaahnama,forged husband,forged witnesses and forged kazi and showed that shumaila was married earlier then how could she marry again. which was all false and forged . infact she was never ever engaged even. marriage was out of question. we took this matter to media. and we told everything about their conspiracy and how they are harassing us to media. our clip was shown on air and it was printed in newspapers also. when they saw that now they can go behind the bars in the case of 420, they apologized to us and entered into a memorandum of compromise. we accepted that compromise coz of fear of Allah. now her father says that our marriage is void coz it was solemnized without his consent. he says that in shariah it is compulsory that all marriages should be solemnized by the consent of father. now my question to your goodself is , ” is really our marriage is void ? is really consent of father is compulsory in solemnizing a marriage?” specially in a case when father is so cruel and non cooperative. and when he is not taking into consideration his daughter’s happiness. please send me the fatwa in this case at my email address reachsajid@rediffmail.com thanking you for your fine support and cooperation.