The Uttar Pradesh Police have arrested three people accused of forcefully converting and marrying off a 15-year-old girl, a resident of Jaunpur district in Uttar Pradesh. The arrest was made after police found out that the accused Salim along with his father Abdul and brother-in-law Rahman were in Bharuch, Gujarat. The accused originally hail from Uttar Pradesh’s Firozabad city.
According to reports, Salim, one of the accused, worked at a canteen run by the victim’s father in Bharuch, Gujarat. He brought the victim to his hometown Firozabad by taking the victim’s father into confidence that he would get his daughter treated for an ailment of hers by an occultist he knew in Firozabad.
After getting the victim to his hometown, Salim, with the help of his father Abdul and brother-in-law Rahman, forcefully converted her to Islam and married her.
Giving details about the incident, Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Ashok Kumar said that after Salim did not return, the girl’s father reached Firozabad and lodged a complaint.
“The accused Salim brought the girl to Firozabad in the name of treatment and changed her Hindu name to a Muslim one. The accused Salim, aged 21 (years) married the minor girl, aged 15 years. The family members of the girl lodged a complaint…,” Ashok Kumar said.
Based on his complaint, police arrested the trio and registered a case against them. Now, the police are making arrangements to send back the victim to her father, added Ashok Kumar.
“The case was registered under relevant IPC sections and as the girl was a minor, the accused were (also) booked under POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences) Act, besides the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020,” the SSP said. “All three of the accused were presented in court and sent to jail,” he said.
Many states like Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand and Odisha have enacted anti-conversion laws.
ISI-funded mass conversion racket busted by Uttar Pradesh ATS
Recently, the Uttar Pradesh ATS busted a mass conversion racket and arrested two men identified as Umar Gautam and Mufti Qazi Jehangir for their involvement in illegal religious conversions. After the arrests, many victims have come up to narrate how they were brainwashed and forced to take up Islam by the accused.
Umar Gautam who is a convert himself revealed that they converted around 250-300 people every year. During the interrogation, Umar also informed that he targeted people from the economically weaker section of the society including women, children, and the disabled. Gautam confessed to having converted around 1,500 children at school for the deaf and mute in Noida after the school management was enticed with promises of employment and money.
