UP court says 'love jihad' a serious threat to country, sentences accused to life imprisonment

An Uttar Pradesh court has said that ‘love jihad’ (Muslim men marrying Hindu girls under false pretences) poses a serious threat to the country and apprehended ‘’foreign funding’’ in engineering religious conversions as it sentenced a Muslim man, who was accused of marrying a Hindu woman by hiding his religious identity, to life imprisonment.

Additional district & sessions judge in Bareilly Ravi Kumar Diwakar also imposed a fine of Rs one lakh on the accused Mohammed Aalim and also sentenced his father to two years imprisonment.

The decision of the court came in a case in which Aalim was accused of hiding his religious identity and deceiving a Hindu girl into marriage by posing as Anand in Bareilly district recently.

According to the prosecution, Aalim met the girl at a coaching centre and introduced himself as Anand. He later married the girl at a temple. Aalim also made the girl drink a juice laced with a medicine to induce abortion when she got pregnant.

The girl, after coming to know that Anand was in fact Aalim, lodged an FIR with the police accusing him of marrying her by hiding his religious identity, making physical relationship, inducing abortion without her knowledge and also assaulting her.

‘’It’s a matter of attempted illegal religious conversion through love jihad.....in love jihad, the Muslim men target Hindu women by hiding their religious identity...love jihad requires large amounts of money and so foreign funding can’t be ruled out,’’ the judge said.

The court also said that the main objective of ‘love jihad’ was to alter demographics and it was driven by some religious groups within a religious community. It, however, added that the entire religious community was not to be blamed for the same.

‘’The country will face serious consequences if illegal religious conversions through love jihad are not stopped,’’ he remarked.

Interestingly, the woman, in this case, had later turned hostile and said that she had lodged the complaint under pressure from the right wing groups.

Incidentally Ravi Kumar Dwakar, while he was an additional judge in Varanasi, had ordered videography of the contentious Gyanvapi Mosque complex and sealing the ‘wazukhana’ (a place where the Muslim wash their hands and feet before proceeding to offer prayer).