Kashmiri man detained in Odisha after woman alleges he forced her to convert and marry

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha Police on Friday detained a Kashmiri man after a woman filed a complaint that he forced her to undergo religious conversion and marry him, an officer said.

The man also allegedly threatened the woman of Jagtsinghpur district to upload video clips of their intimate moments on the internet.

The police registered a case at the Mahila Police Station here and sent the alleged victim to a hospital for medical examination.

The man identified as Samir Mansoor, who claimed to be hailing from Bihar and presently staying in Kashmir, was nabbed while he was trying to leave from Odisha by train, the officer said.

In the FIR, the woman claimed she came to know Mansoor through an online game in 2022 and was not aware of his religion initially.

“He forced me to convert and marry him. When I refused to convert, he made some of our intimate moments viral and blackmailed my father,” the woman alleged in the FIR.

The woman’s lawyer Sanghamitra Rajguru said that she was in love with Mansoor without knowing his religion.

The man, who had hidden his surname and identified himself only as Samir, visited Odisha twice and took her to Puri where she came to know that he belongs to another religion, the lawyer said.

“When she refused to marry her after knowing his religion, he forced her into a physical relationship and made a video of those intimate moments. He then persuaded her to change her religion and marry him, while threatening to make the videos viral,” the lawyer said.

Rajguru also accused Mansoor of extorting Rs 5 lakh from her parents threatening to upload the intimate videos on a porn site.

“I came to know that he belongs to some other religion about 6-7 months after coming in contact with him. He has been mentally torturing me and my family since then,” the woman told reporters after lodging a complaint at the Mahila Police Station here.

SN Muduli, Additional Commissioner of Police of Bhubaneswar-Cuttack Commissionrate of Police, said, “The police detained the man and are verifying the allegations.” Replying to a query from reporters, the lawyer said the woman was forced to undergo religious conversion and “we can call it a case of love jihad”.

‘Love jihad’ is a term used by right-wing activists to allege a ploy by Muslim men to lure Hindu women into religious conversion through marriage.