First case filed under UP’S ‘love jihad’ law

LUCKNOW: Hours after Uttar Pradesh governor Anandiben Patel approved an ordinance promulgated by the state government against forced religious conversions, the police registered the first case under it against a Muslim man in Bareilly district on Saturday night, senior police officers said on Sunday.

Additional director general (ADG), Bareilly zone, Avinash Chandra confirmed that a first information report (FIR) had been registered at the Devraniya police station in Bareilly. He said a Hindu man of Sharifnagar village had accused the Muslim man of pressuring his daughter to convert to Islam.

The ADG said the complainant alleged that the Muslim man knew his daughter from their college days; the complainant also said the man had been troubling his daughter and family members for the past few months.

The FIR, a copy of which is in HT’S possession, said the man made abusive remarks against the family members and threatened them that with harm for opposing his moves to convert the woman to Islam.

Another Bareilly police officer, requesting anonymity, said the complainant and the accused Muslim man were from the same village, but they hadn’t married, and the incident had affected communal harmony in the neighbourhood. He said the man had been booked under sections 504 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for insulting a person and 506 for criminal intimidation.

He was also booked under Section 3/5 of the Uttar Pradesh

Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, which came into effect on Saturday after the governor signed it. The ordinance has provisions to check religious conversions carried out by “allurement, coercion, force, fraud, or marriage.”

The state cabinet cleared the law earlier this month, targeting what many right-wing groups s term “love jihad”, which involves Muslim men marrying Hindu women with the aim of changing the latter’s religion after marriage. According to the ordinance, marriage with the intention is of changing the woman’s religion will be declared null and void.

Under the provisions of the new law, the violations have been made a cognizable and non-bailable offence. The new law authorises an aggrieved

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