The court said the police cannot take any enforcement action against the defendants for now.
Lucknow:
A 32-year-old Muslim, one of the first to be charged under Uttar Pradesh’s controversial anti-conversion law, cannot yet be arrested, the Allahabad High Court ruled, entering the spiraling debate over “Love Jihad.”
Nadeem and his brother Salman were named in the complaint filed last month in Muzaffarnagar, western Uttar Pradesh, by Akshay Kumar Tyagi, who works for a prominent pharmaceutical company as a labor contractor.
Akshay said that Nadeem, a worker, used to frequent his home in Haridwar and had “trapped” his wife Parul in a “love net” with the aim of converting her. To seduce her, Nadeem gave her a smartphone and promised to marry her, Akshay alleged.
Taking Nadeem’s request to remove the First Information or FIR, the Allahabad High Court said that the police cannot take any enforcement action against him yet, granting him protection from arrest until the next hearing date.
The court said it did not yet have any evidence “that Nadeem is adopting any force or coercive process.”
“The victim is undoubtedly an adult who understands her well-being. Both she and the petitioner have a fundamental right to privacy and to be older adults who know the consequences of their alleged relationship,” the court said in an important statement. that could affect similar cases.
Uttar Pradesh adopted an anti-conversion ordinance late last month in the state amid heightened sensitivity over “Love Jihad,” the right-wing conspiracy theory that Muslim men try to seduce Hindu women into converting their religion.
The term “love jihad is not defined by law,” the Union Interior Ministry told parliament in February, adding that central agencies had not reported such a case. However, since last month, several BJP-ruled states have moved toward a law against it.
Uttar Pradesh, which has a large part of the Muslim population, has been the first to leave the bloc with an ordinance or executive order, which says that religious conversions that use falsehood, force or an incentive, or that take place solely for marriage, they will be declared a crime.
The law has been severely criticized by civil society activists as yet another move by the state’s BJP government to target Muslims with prominent jurists like former AP Judge Shah calling for it to be immediately repealed.
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