Madhya Pradesh rattled by spate of ‘love jihad' cases: What police found

India Today

3 days ago

The Madhya Pradesh police, over the past couple of months, have been dealing with a series of crimes that, owing to their communal overtone, could blow up into wider law and order issues in the state. The alleged 'love jihad' cases threaten to keep the communal cauldron on the boil and were perpetrated despite the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act, 2021, a law enacted to deter religious conversions through force, undue influence, coercion or fraud, including those done in the name of marriage.In April, six Muslim men were arrested in Bhopal after a woman complained that she had been sexually exploited by some of them. The woman alleged she was being blackmailed over her intimate videos with one of the men. She told the police she was being pressured to convert to Islam.advertisementThe police invoked provisions of Freedom of Religion Act and rape laws against the accused. The case soon expanded to several women studying in an engineering college in Bhopal. Matters took a communal turn as all the accused were from the minority community while the women were Hindus.On July 1, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) sent a letter to the state chief secretary and director general of police (DGP), asking them to ensure that the complainants, who had discontinued their studies following the alleged exploitation, be given readmission in college. The NHRC increased the compensation for each woman from the Rs 50,000 announced by the state government to Rs 5 lakh.
The panel has asked the state government to rehabilitate the complainants and pay the fees for those students who dropped out of college due to the case. The panel also asked for disciplinary action against police personnel who had ordered the demolition of a restaurant where the women had allegedly been sexually exploited, terming it as destruction of evidence.In another case in April, four Hindu girls—three of them minors—from Bichrod village in Ujjain district filed a police complaint that they had been raped and were under coercion to convert. The six accused in the case, including a minor, are Muslims.In June, four men from the minority community in Nagda in Ujjain were booked for rape and under provisions of the Freedom of Religion Act after four Hindu girls pressed charges that they had been sexually exploited and asked to convert.In May, Mohsin Khan, a coach at Indore's Dream Olympic Shooting Academy, was booked for allegedly sexually exploiting a former student. The girl claimed she had been harassed in 2023 and had been threatened all this while not to speak out. The police claimed Khan's phone contained videos of him exploiting girls, mostly his students. The Bajrang Dal's local chapter termed the case as 'love jihad'.In June, two men, Sahil Sheikh and Altaf Shah, alleged they had been paid money by Anwar Qadri, a Congress corporator in the Indore Municipal Corporation, to marry Hindu women and convert them. Qadri has been booked by the police. The matter has taken a political turn with the Congress terming the allegations as political vendetta.advertisementGymnasiums in the state have lately emerged as new communal battlegrounds, with some Hindu groups demanding that Hindu women be trained only by members of their community. A video went viral of a police sub-inspector in Bhopal purportedly asking gym owners not to allow Muslim trainers. He was transferred following a hue and cry.The state police have formed a special investigation team (SIT), headed by Bhopal inspector general Abhay Singh, to probe the Bhopal cases. An advisory has also been issued for college students by the Crime Against Women cell of the police. 'Investigations are on in the cases and a report will be submitted soon,' said Singh.Sources said the investigations had not found any financial angle or evidence of an organised gang at work.The Congress has blamed the ruling BJP for the law and order situation. 'For any crime happening in the state, the BJP government is directly or indirectly responsible as they have been in power for almost two decades. This is not a communal issue but that of women in general being unsafe in the state,' said Congress spokesperson Abbas Hafiz. Criticising BJP leaders for allegedly making communal statements on these cases, Hafiz added: 'Communal statements only disrupt harmony and help certain parties gain votes.'advertisementWhile Hindu groups were raking up 'love jihad', a case was reported in which the woman was a Muslim and had allegedly been befriended by a Hindu youth by posing as Muslim. This prompted some Muslim groups to challenge the contours of the term 'love jihad'.Meanwhile, a petition came up in the high court that the term 'love jihad' not be used by the media in its reporting. The court refused to intervene.Subscribe to India Today Magazine- EndsMust Watch