On June 19, late in the evening, a Muslim woman’s body was discovered hanging outside of her leased residence in the Aligarh region of Uttar Pradesh. According to preliminary evidence, the woman named Muskan, had eloped with and married a Hindu man named Deepak a few years ago.
The news of her death was quickly spread on social media under the hashtag ‘bhagwa love trap’, suggesting that the man had lured the woman into a relationship in exchange for her conversion to Hinduism and then killed her. However, the police discovered that the woman had split from Deepak a year ago and had been residing with a man named Mohammed Faizan ever since.
The tweets shared on social media by Islamist and left liberals falsely indicated that Muskan’s death was a result of some hoax concept recently developed by the Islamists named the ‘Bhagwa Love Trap,’ to counter the reality of love jihad.
Zakir Ali Tyagi, a journalist for the contentious website The Wire, Kashif Arsalaan, a Muslim activist with more than 34,000 Twitter followers, Shahin Khan, a student with 46,000 followers on Twitter, Sadaf Afreen, a journalist with more than 61,000 followers on Twitter, and Kavish Aziz, a user with 58,000 Twitter followers are among those who suggested Deepak as accused under the so-called ‘Bhagwa love trap’.
According to the initial report by Swarajya, the woman died due to suicide. The station house officer (SHO) of Kotwali Nagar Police in Aligarh confirmed the suicide and stated that the man with whom the woman had been staying after Deepak had surrendered in the case. Faizan surrendered in court on June 22 and told the court that Muskan had been pressuring him for nikah while he had been avoiding it.
The officer reported that on the morning of June 19, according to Faizan’s landlord, Faizan left the residence and went to see a relative. The landlord discovered Muskan’s body hanging from the ceiling at 10 pm.
“The landlord became suspicious when there was no sound coming from Faizan and Muskan’s room all day,” the SHO, Ramvakeel Singh was quoted as saying by Swarajya.
He gave the door a gentle tap at around 10, and it opened without any difficulty. He then discovered Muskan hanging from the ceiling of the room after which he called the cops right away. The ‘bhagwa love trap’ theory was triggered by initial suspicions of Muskan’s parents.
They also provided the Kotwali Nagar Police with a written statement outlining their allegations. The SHO, on the other hand, informed that Muskan’s parents had not spoken to her for a while and were not aware of the change in her life that had occurred when she settled in with Faizan and left Deepak.
According to the SHO, Muskan eloped with Deepak in 2019 while she was still a minor. Her parents later filed a complaint against Deepak for kidnapping after which the girl was recovered by the Police.
Muskan testified before the court that she had eloped and was not the victim of kidnapping, which led to Deepak’s release on bail from judicial custody. After some time, they fled together once again and started living together. The SHO stated that it is unclear if they were legally wed.
According to an initial investigation, Muskan moved in with Faizan, who is also from Aligarh, roughly 2.5 years ago after parting ways with Deepak. “They lived in several places including Delhi. In their current house, in which her body was found, they moved a couple of months ago,” the SHO said.
According to Circle Officer Abhay Kumar Pandey, Faizan is currently being held in judicial custody on charges of facilitating suicide. He stated that more inquiry may involve questioning Deepak as well. The officer also asserted that the claims of a “bhagwa love trap” in this case are absurd.
Conspiracy of Bhagwa Love Trap
A long-running belief among Muslim organisations claims that Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) particularly educates Hindu men to target Muslim women for relationships in order to persuade them to convert to their religion to Hinduism.
The conspiracy theorists refer to it as the “bhagwa love trap,” where “bhagwa” means saffron and refers to Hindus. Prominent clerics, adherents of particular political parties, influencers, journalists, and anonymous social media accounts are among those who are blindy promoting this propaganda.
With the increasing radicalization among Islamists in India, Hindu men are repeatedly being attacked if they even walk with a female Muslim colleague. At these times, Hindu men always end up at the mercy of law enforcement authorities.
A couple of months ago, Islamists began peddling the baseless theory, “Bhagwa Love Trap” to counter 100s of documented cases of impersonation, identity fraud, and forced conversions to Islam (popularly known as Love Jihad). While it started out as a social media hashtag, Islamists began sharing videos of random hijab-wearing Muslim women and their male Hindu friends/ acquaintances and partners without their consent.
Such incidents even happening today are followed by heated arguments, physical assault on the Hindu men, and even molestation of the Muslim women. The attacks are carried out under the pretext that a sinister plot is underway to convert Muslim women to Hinduism by luring them into a love trap.
It is not a new phenomenon for Islamists to come up with conspiracy theories that absolve them of any wrongdoing or project them as perpetual victims. This time they seem to use the conspiracy theory of the ‘Bhagwa Love trap’ to rationalize their act of moral policing and violence against the Hindu community.
Multiple videos have now come to light where rabid Islamist mobs are seen openly harassing, abusing, and manhandling inter-faith couples. These videos have been reported from different cities/States of India. The victims are targeted on roads, restaurants, eateries, and even hotels. Based on local reports and social media videos, OpIndia has compiled several such cases where Hindu men and Muslim women were attacked by extremists under the pretext of ‘Bhagwa love trap.’ Those reports can be accessed here and here.
