Uttar Pradesh police have taken to Twitter to call out media reports which have claimed that the cops stopped a Muslim couple from getting married based on ‘rumours of love jihad’. Sharing a screenshot of a news report published by The Indian Express, the Kushinagar police Tweeted that the accusations meted out at them by the media outlet are baseless. It said that it had only acted on a missing complaint lodged by the brides’ family.
Kushinagar police clarified that the girl’s family had filed a complaint against the youth, accusing him of kidnapping the girl. Acting on the complaint, police brought the couple to the police station for questioning. The girls’ family at Azamgarh district was informed and the girl was subsequently handed over to her family members, Tweeted Kushinagar police.
— Kushinagar Police (@kushinagarpol) December 11, 2020
The police were responding to a report by The Indian Express, which accused the Uttar Pradesh police of stopping a wedding ceremony of a Muslim couple on Tuesday following a phone call claiming that a Muslim man was marrying a Hindu woman after converting her, letting them go only the next day after finding that both were Muslims. The report titled “‘Love jihad’ rumour: Wedding stopped in UP, Muslim couple kept overnight at police station”, also said that 39-year-old Haider Ali had alleged that the police personnel beat him up with a leather belt and tortured him for hours at the Kasya Police Station.
This report was also carried by many other mainstream media outlets. The ultra-leftist news portal The Wire went a step ahead to claim that the Uttar Pradesh police were misusing the “controversial new anti-conversion law”. The Wire also quoted The Indian Express to claim that “Kasya Police Station SHO Sanjay Kumar told Indian Express that “miscreants” were to blame, and that the couple was let go after the police realised they were from the same religion”.
Similarly, other left-leaning anti-Hindu media outlets like The Logical Indian and Times Now also picked up the news accusing Uttar Pradesh police of forcefully stopping the wedding of a Muslim couple based over “suspicion of love jihad”. They too alleged that the groom was tortured and beaten up in the lock-up by police personnel. A claim which the Kushinagar police vociferously denied.
