Lucknow: Contrary to the polarizing campaign carried out in the name of ‘love jihad’ by the Uttar Pradesh government and Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, a ‘special investigation’ launched by the UP Police into the allegations of attraction and forced conversion of women Hindus has turned out to be a wet squib. The official report, presented on Saturday to Kanpur Police Inspector General Mohit Agarwal, concluded that most of the Hindu-Muslim romance cases investigated were consensual.
All 22 Kanpur City Police Stations were asked to report suspected cases of Hindu-Muslim romance, but only 14 cases emerged, which the special investigation team investigated.
The SIT report, which The wire has agreed, concludes that in eight of the 14 cases, Hindu women had married Muslim men or had been with them of their own free will. In six cases, the registered FIRs are still under investigation, although in one of those cases the accused Muslim has been released on bail, presumably for lack of evidence.
In a country where daughters who marry men against the will of their fathers, including their own religion, are often pressured to return home and file cases of kidnapping or harassment against their husbands, the failure of the SIT In establishing a compelling and exclusive pattern of ‘Muslim coercion’ is a setback for the politicians who had ordered the ‘love jihad’ investigation.
‘Love jihad’ is the term invented by Hindutva groups to describe an imaginary conspiracy in which Muslim men seduce Hindu women in order to convert them and eventually to make Hindus a minority in India. In recent months, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its affiliated organizations across the country have aggressively deployed the mandate.
While the top ministers of Karnataka, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh have vowed to enact laws to combat this alleged conspiracy, Adityanath has been one of the loudest BJP voices against ‘love jihad’. At an election rally in Jaunpur recently, he threatened to kill young people “who play with the honor of our sisters and daughters.”
However, a senior UP police official who spoke with The wire this week, on condition of anonymity, he acknowledged that the phenomenon of ‘love jihad’ in the state has been greatly exaggerated.
What the police investigation found
In September, the eight members of the Kanpur SIT police investigated 14 cases in which Muslim men allegedly married Hindu women and either forcibly converted them or had developed “romantic relationships” through deception.
The SIT was formed after Hindutva activists met with the Kanpur IGP to complain about the ‘love jihad’ incidents. Hindutva groups got involved after reports emerged that a Kanpur woman, Shalini Yadav, was marrying a Muslim. Although she denied the claim that she had been forced to convert to Islam and even recorded a video to make it clear, her mother claimed that she had said so under “pressure” and the UP government decided to order an investigation.
SIT contacted all police stations in Kanpur to identify and investigate all allegations of forced conversion of Hindu women. Two months later, the investigation was completed and a final report submitted. When The wire contacted the head of SIT, Vikas Pandey, to discuss the findings of his report, he said: “The report is for the government, not for journalists.”
His reluctance may be related to the SIT’s findings, which differ markedly from the political hype surrounding “love jihad.”
In eight of the 14 cases investigated, the women openly declared that their relationships with the accused were consensual and based on love. Six of them involved marriages with Muslim men, while two were limited to what the police report calls “love affairs.”
One of these two women apparently told police that she had had “love affairs” with a Muslim, but that this was because the man had promised to marry her.
In the six cases in which a nikah, or marriage according to Islamic rites, the police treated the husbands as defendants but could not produce evidence that the women were forcibly converted and not because of their own desire to marry.
One of the women was quoted as saying that there was a love story between her and the accused, and that she had known him long before. Another woman confirmed to the police that she had left by consensus with the accused, had made physical contacts and had decided to marry him of her own free will. In a statement, a third woman said there was no pressure on her to marry the defendant and that she had come to him on her own. Another woman said she had a nikah with the accused of his free will. The report notes that three of the women clearly added that the complaints mentioned are false.
Six cases to be prosecuted, but doubts remain
Of the 14 cases investigated, only six have been identified by the police as suspects. The SIT report says that these women have “validated” the claims of the FIR’s complainants, who are, in most cases, the woman’s brother or father.
Of these, one involves an accusation of rape, two are of marriage where the man used a false name, one is an alleged kidnapping, one is bullying and one of a boy has an affair with a girl on the phone using a false name.
In the latter case, the girl told police that she used to talk to a boy named Babu on the phone. But one day he took her to a mosque and asked her to convert to Islam, which she refused to do.
In the two false marriage cases, police said the accused men had befriended the women using Hindu names. In one case, police said the defendant had married the woman without revealing his religion and spoke to her about his religion only after the marriage was consummated. The defendant had married the woman in court with false documentation, the SIT report says.
In one of the six cases, the defendant used to threaten the woman and do “bad deeds” on a freight truck, police said.
In another of the six cases still under investigation, the police have invoked sections 360 (kidnapping) and 366 (kidnapping, kidnapping or inducing a woman to force her to marry, etc.) of the IPC. The complainant, Rahul Srivastava, the woman’s brother, says in his complaint: “Saath kaam karne waala ladka… bhaga le gaya hai (A man who worked [with his sister] has eloped with her) “.
Although the charges are serious and carry a penalty of up to 10 years in prison, the defendant in this case, Shahrukh, is now free on bail. According to a friend of the accused, he was released a month after his arrest, as no evidence was found against him. This casts doubt on the authenticity of the six criminal cases that have been registered.
Talking to The wireAzra, Shahrukh’s advocate, said it was far from being a case of “love jihad” as it was projected.
When The wire He tried to contact the woman – who according to the SIT report has “validated” the complainant’s version – her brother took the phone and refused to let this correspondent speak with the woman. “My sister had been indoctrinated by the boy,” he said.
When asked for more information on this case, the Naubasta Police Station, SHO Kunj Bihari Mishra, said it does not “remember the details of the case.”
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