As cases of love jihad continue to be reported across the country, in Assam two cases of kidnapping have come to the fore. In the first case, two Muslim men kidnapped a minor Hindu girl in the Tamarhat neighborhood of the Dhubri district.
As per a report in Organiser, Sultan Ali and Abdul Mannan Seikh abducted the 17-year-old who belongs to the Konch Rajbanshi community from Borkhosuwa village on June 10. The next day her family brought a complaint to the Tamarhat police station.
Such incidents, according to student leader Siben Roy from the same Koch Rajbanshi community, are frequent in areas with a high concentration of minorities, such as Dhubri. He stated that there have been many instances where Muslim males try to trap minor Hindu girls by faking their identities.
Sultan Ali disguised himself as a Bengali Hindu and used to converse with the girl, as per reports. She received a call from him and his companion Abdul Mannan Seikh on June 10 in the evening. He told her to meet them near her home and then proceeded to kidnap her. The accused were found by authorities five days after the incident, but the minor victim has not been found yet.
The minor’s family is extremely apprehensive. They stated that a case had been opened by the police under Section 74/23 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Section 366/34 of the Indian Penal Code.
Sultan Ali is believed to have transported her to Arunachal Pradesh because his friends are contract laborers there. The Koch Rajbanshi students union has threatened to organise a protest against the police and the authorities if the minor victim is not rescued soon.
In another incident, a 16-year-old Hindu girl was kidnapped by Nizam Uddin Ahmed in the Golaghat area of upper Assam. The district’s Uriamghat police station has received a report of the crime. She vanished on June 15 after leaving a computer class at the Uriamghat Bazaar computer centre, as per reports.
She reportedly informed her mother over the phone that Nizam Uddin Ahmed, who is already married and a resident of Pulibar in the Jorhat area, took her. Her mother filed a complaint with the Uriamghat police station on June 16. The locals alleged that the police is not taking necessary measures to save the minor.
Many people demonstrated in front of the police station on June 18 and urged them to take immediate action. They asserted that the culprit pretended to be a Hindu in order to entrap the girl in love jihad. When she learned about his true identity, she rejected to meet him. But on June 15, when she was returning home from a computer class, he abducted her forcibly. Nizam Uddin Ahmed has a history of drug dealing, for which he had previously been arrested and imprisoned. He also has a history of previous offences.
In another incident, a poor Hindu girl was saved from a Muslim family in May 2023 in the Assam district of Udalguri after a year. In 2022, a person by the name of Harej Ali befriended her from the upper Assam region of Sivasagar through his Facebook account under the fake name name Bipin Kalita.
He kidnapped her after a few months of their online relationship and transported her to Bengaluru, where he worked as a factory worker. The victim was forced to work in a coffee factory for six months without receiving any kind of wage.
She was tortured by Harej Ali after she found out who he really was. He brought her to his hometown hamlet in the Bhakatpara region after she resided for six months in Bengaluru. She was tormented at home by his entire family, and coerced to embrace Islam, but she resisted.
However, she managed to escape somehow and reached Kalaigaon town on May 8 in a destitute state. People took her to the Kalaigaon police station after she pleaded with them for assistance. Afterward, she lodged a First Information Report (FIR) against Harej Ali and his family. The perpetrator was then taken into custody by the police.
A person named Abdul Ali sexually assaulted a minor Hindu girl in the Lakhimpur area in north Assam. He worked as a labourer at a district construction site and identified himself to the victim as a Hindu. He repeatedly raped her after she was entrapped in love jihad. When she became pregnant, the horrible incident became public and Abdul Ali ran away as soon as he was made aware of the same.
