A Muslim man identified as Daud Ibrahim has been booked under the anti-conversion law and the SC-ST Act by the Uttar Pradesh Police for trapping a Hindu woman in an affair, marrying her, forcing her to convert to Islam, undergo ‘nikah halala’, and offer namaz.
According to a report by Subhi Vishwakarma from Organiser, Asia Bharti, a Dalit woman, submitted a complaint to the police on 9th September stating that she was trapped by her alleged husband Daud Ibrahim, who had posed as Rahul Gupta.
Tow years ago scheduled caste woman left by her husband got married to Rahul Gupta. After sometime she found he was actually Daud Ibrahim. Soon Daud & family started pressuring her to convert, undergo halala, offer namaz, remove Bindi, Alta, Mangalsutra & more.
— Subhi Vishwakarma (@subhi_karma) September 13, 2023
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In the FIR filed at the Akbarpur police station of the Ahmednagar district, the victim in her complaint told the police that almost two years ago, Daud Ibrahim, son of Wajid Ali alias Buddhu Kabadi, posed as Rahul Gupta lured her into a relationship.
The victim was already married when she was deceived by Ibrahim. The affair broke her marriage and Ibrahim took the victim with him, and the two began living together. The victim alleged that whenever she asked Ibrahim to marry her, he made an excuse.
Eventually, the victim found out that Rahul Gupta was actually Daud Ibrahim, and had since been pressured to convert to Islam by Ibrahim and his family. She was assaulted on 1st September for refusing to convert and was thrown out of the house.
Organiser Correspondent Subhi Vishwakarma spoke to the victim on 11 September. The victim said that she now lives with her daughter in a rented house. “My family left me long ago when I left my husband for Rahul alias Daud almost two years ago,” she said.
The victim identified her caste as ‘chamar’ which falls under the scheduled caste category. She claimed that she knew the accused as Rahul before her first marriage but her family had arranged a wedding with a main of their choice and caste.
The victim was happily married to her husband and had a daughter with him. But one day, Rahul alias Daud barged into her in-law’s house created a scene, and made allegations against her. This led to the victim’s husband abandoning her. “I had nowhere to go but to live with Rahul,” she told Organiser. The victim was also abandoned by her own family.
“Initially, he kept me with him without a marriage. Then arguments began over the same and he took me to a nearby temple in the Usarpur-Malipur area where as got married as per Hindu rituals. His friends joined on but not his family. Rahul (Daud) never stayed with me for long, he used to come on vacations and then left for work. He lived in Surat, Gujarat. I asked him to get the marriage registered but he kept on making excuses,” the victim narrated.
The victim further told Organiser that she had been pressuring the accused to get their marriage registered but he kept making excuses. “One day I created a ruckus and hence he had to shift the room. In a rush, he took me to a colony where his relatives lived, there people called him Daud Ibrahim, and mostly Muslims resided in the colony. That is when I learnt that he is a Muslim,” she said.
Asiya, the victim, said she confronted Daud after learning about his true identity and asked him why he lied about his religion. To this, according to the victim, Daud said “he was madly in love with her and if he had introduced himself with his real name, she would never have agreed to the marriage or affair for that matter.”
The victim was allegedly subjected to physical violence by Daud and his family. Daud would beat her every time she raised the matter of registering their marriage. “After I learned about his true identity, I started pressuring him even more to get the marriage registered,” she said.
“Then one day, out of nowhere, he took me to his house in Mirzapur Kodra. It was a normal house, I did not feel that they were Muslims, and no pictures or anything else was there. Daud told his family that, I was a Muslim woman. He had even brought me a burqa before taking me home,” she narrated.
After Daud’s family learnt that Asiya was a Hindu, they started forcing her to undergo ‘nikal halala’ and accept Islam in order to have a ‘nikal’ (Muslim wedding) with Daud. The family of the accused demanded that the victim stop wearing Bindi, Mangalsuta, and toe-rings, and put Alta (Mahawar, red paint).
“I used to wear them as a symbol of marriage, they asked me to live by their ways and apply mehendi instead,” the victim said adding that “the married women in the house looked like widows.
Moreover, the victim was told to do Roza-Zakat and become a “Namazi”.
“They would discuss that they could arrange a cleric who would teach me how to pray. One day, during an argument around my conversion, Daud’s sister said she knew a cleric who would do the halala and get me converted to Islam,” she said.
The victim did not know what halala was. When Organiser correspondent Subhi Vishwakarma told her about the same, the victim was shocked. The victim also narrated how Daud’s family would repeatedly berate Hindus, and say that “there is only one Lord that is Allah.”
The family of the accused also threatened to feed the victim beef. Asiya alleged that her pregnancy was terminated three times ever since she moved in with Daud. “When Daud took me to his parent’s house I was already pregnant with his baby. After his family learned of the same, they began telling me to abort. When I refused, they gave me food and water and I started to bleed,” she reportedly said.
The victim claimed that till the time she knew Daud as Rahul, he would take care of his daughter, visit temples with her, offer prayers, and wear kalawa. He was also addressed by his friends as Rahul and not Daud. But he began talking about Allah and stopped the victim from praying after they moved to his parent’s house.
Station House Officer, Malipur, Prem Chandra reportedly said that the family of the victim married her to a Hindu man but she eloped with the accused and had a marriage as per Hindu rituals. Calls made to the police by the Organiser reportedly went unanswered.
Meanwhile, the police have booked the accused Daud Ibrahim under Sections 493 (invalid marriage), 504 (intentional insult), and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). He is also charged under Sections 3 and 5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act and Sections of the SC-ST Act.
