The Govindpur Police (Bengaluru) on Wednesday, 9th October arrested one Bilal Rafiq, a Kerala native who disguised as a Navy officer and manipulated a Hindu woman from Chhattisgarh, establishing a sexual relationship with her. The accused befriended the woman promising marriage and then forced her to convert to Islam.
The case came to the fore after the victim woman who hails from Chhattisgarh filed a complaint at the Govindpur Police Station. The woman said that the two started talking on Instagram in 2021. The accused as per the woman pretended to be a high-ranking commander in the Merchant Navy which helped him win her trust and affection. Their connection grew swiftly, and under his encouragement, the woman relocated to Bangalore to pursue work. In 2022, she got a position as a nurse at a private hospital.
However, the relationship quickly took a negative turn as Bilal began pressuring the woman into several sexual encounters, resulting in two pregnancies. He repeatedly pressed her to get rid of the pregnancies employing multiple arguments. As per the reports, the most common argument that the accused used to manipulate the victim woman was that it was not good for them to have kids before marriage. Despite her reservations, the woman cooperated with his demands.
Recently, the woman became pregnant for the third time. This time, she refused to abort the pregnancy and pushed Bilal to marry her. While Bilal initially agreed, he later began forcing the woman to convert her religion to Islam. When she refused, he postponed the wedding proposal even further. According to her complaint, Bilal further continued to exploit her trust by demanding Rs 1 lakh and an expensive phone, stating they were for the wedding preparations.
The woman also stated that the parents of the accused amid the marriage preparations hurled caste-based abuses at her and her family. She was also threatened to convert her religion to Islam.
Unwilling to convert, the woman asked to get married under the Special Marriage Act, which permits interfaith marriages without conversion. However, when Bilal refused to marry her unless she converted, she filed a complaint with the Govindpura Police.
The Police have detained the accused under the relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for cheating and sexual assault and under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention and Atrocities) Act.
