Pushpa Shukla burst into tears when an old video of her eldest daughter, Sanskriti, played on her phone. In a collection of photos, Sanskriti, 22, is bowing her head before a Hindu idol in the house. Two months ago, she left her home and religion and eloped with her 27-year-old neighbour Javed Khan, a Muslim.
The interfaith marriage has aggrieved the pious Shuklas. A winter gloom has since engulfed their modest house in Faridabad. The parents allege that Sanskriti is ‘a victim of love jihad’.
“We are Brahmins. Marrying in a Muslim family is not acceptable in our society. If she doesn’t leave Javed, then we cannot accept her back. We will be ostracised from our community,” says Pushpa.
With a thick blue folder containing his applications to various government departments and newspaper cuttings of interfaith marriages, Sanskriti’s father, Dheeraj Shukla, has been visiting police stations and courts to bring her back. This is the first case of inter-faith relationship in Haryana where the provisions of the Prevention of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, a legislation passed by the state assembly in March 2022, have been applied.
According to the Act, religious conversion for the purpose of marriage will be deemed illegal. Anyone who wishes to convert will now have to explain the reason to the district authority.
Ever since Uttar Pradesh introduced a similar anti-conversion law in 2020, various states have upped the ante against interfaith marriages — mainly against cases involving a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy. Eight other states have brought similar legislation: Karnataka, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Odisha, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and Arunachal Pradesh. Haryana is the 10th state to have hopped on the bandwagon.
Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar had said in March last year that six Haryana districts had reported 127 FIRs related to religious conversion in four years and a law was needed to stop it. In December, the government notified the Rules.
Critics argue that religious conversion isn’t even a big issue in Haryana. Opposition parties, lawyers, and activists in the state say that new law has been introduced by the Bharatiya Janata Party to polarise society for political gains.
Amid all this, Sanskriti and Javed don’t want to be persecuted for loving each other. Their case will go through the litmus test in Haryana.
Also read: ‘Love-jihad’ has a new territory. With Jharkhand murder, it has entered the tribal belt
Setting an example
In Faridabad’s Sanjay Gandhi Memorial Nagar, Sanskriti’s case is the talk of the town. Though interfaith marriages are not new in the district, a challenge to such a marriage on the grounds of ‘invalid’ conversion has been raised for the first time.
At the SGM Nagar police station, it is famously called ‘513 case’, after the FIR number. The FIR was filed on 2 December after months of convincing the police and courts of the ‘validity’ of the case.
Aamir Khan, the lawyer hired by Sanskriti and Javed, dismisses the allegations of the woman’s father, Dheeraj Shukla. He is confident that the law will fall apart in court. But he fears that it will be used as a weapon by disgruntled parents and Hindutva organisations to clamp down on interfaith marriages.
“Sanskriti and Javed decided to marry after their families did not accept their relationship. They have married as consenting adults and there is no forced conversion. The law is being misused,” says Khan.
On 28 October 2022, an hour after he dropped Sanskriti at the HDFC Bank branch where she worked, Dheeraj received a call from the bank saying that his daughter had not reported for work. Her phone was switched off, and so was Javed’s. By evening, his fears turned into reality.
He received a call from the SGM Nagar police station and was told that Sanskriti had married Javed and was seeking protection from her parents. Till today, Dheeraj and Pushpa are in denial that their daughter has married a Muslim man. They are convinced that she has been brainwashed by Javed and his family.
“They [Javed and his family] have kept her inactive on social media and her phone is off,” says Pushpa.
When the couple turned to the police, they were moved to a protection home. Now they have moved out and are living in an undisclosed location. Neither Sanskriti nor Javed want hate to come knocking on their door.
“When we went to meet her at the protection home, Javed was with her, and she refused to talk to us. I am sure they are keeping her confined and under pressure,” alleges Pushpa.
But Javed’s family says they could see it coming.
“Sanskriti’s family threw her out of the house one night and she came to our house. We sent her back. She had told her family several times that she wanted to marry Javed, but they did not agree,” says Firoz, Javed’s elder brother.
Also read: India’s first ‘love jihad’ conviction—a volatile mix of POCSO, kidnapping, abuse, conversion
Blank stares from police
While he’s banking on Haryana’s anti-conversion Act, Dheeraj, an insurance agent, had to first ‘educate’ the local police and even lawyers.
The Act states that conversions done for the purpose of marriage will no longer be acceptable. Such marriages will also be declared null and void. As per the affidavit and the nikah nama submitted by Sanskriti in the court, she converted to Islam the day she married Javed.
After Dheeraj collected the affidavit and saw it as proof that Sanskriti’s conversion did not happen as per the new law, he approached the police station on 8 December with a lot of hope to register an FIR. But he was met with outdated systems and blank stares from the officials.
“Nobody knew about it. I gave them a copy of the Act,” says Dheeraj who carries a printout of the Act in his blue folder.
The Act had not been updated in Haryana’s Crime and Criminal Tracking Network System (CCTNS). That is why its provisions could not be added to his FIR, say Dheeraj and Station House Officer Sandeep Kumar. It was only when Dheeraj filed an application to the police commissioner on 16 November that the thana approached the legal cell for advice on including the provisions of the Act. Over the next two weeks, the Act got updated on the CCTNS.
Curiosity about the case has made the police station famous.
“People are calling us from different thanas and asking about the Act and in which cases it can be applied,” says an officer at SGM Nagar police station.
SHO Kumar explains that since it was a new Act, it took a while for them to understand how it was to be implemented.
“Not many people are aware of it. Once awareness spreads, then people will follow the process and the problems will not arise,” says Kumar who is also the investigating officer in the case.
In the courts as well, there was ambiguity about the Act and its provisions were unclear when the matter was first heard for bail.
“The judge also asked – which Act is this? Then Dheeraj’s lawyer showed a June notification to him. The judge kept it with him and said he will order in the evening after going through the notification,” says Khan.
Conversion a heinous crime
Lawyers ThePrint spoke to say that Haryana’s anti-conversion law violates the fundamental rights of citizens.
A person who wishes to convert has to give a detailed application to the district magistrate. The discretion to allow conversion after a month of inviting objections lies solely with the DM. “The DM decides whether you should be allowed to convert or not. There are not very stringent safeguards as to how he will decide whether it is a forced conversion or not. This is a blatant violation of Article 21 and the freedom to profess any religion,” says Amrita Garg, human rights advocate practising in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
“How much are we willing to let the State into our personal affairs, something as personal as religion?” she asks.
Section 4 of the Act also gives the mandate to a wide range of people who can raise objections to conversion. The victim’s parents, siblings, or any person related by blood, marriage, adoption, guardianship, or custodianship can file a complaint. Police, government, and court officers, too, have the authority to challenge the conversion.
Garg says this opens the Act to a lot of misuse.
“In a lot of cases, the girl’s family files frivolous FIRs for abduction and rape against the boy and his family. There are cases where the religion is concealed at the time of marriage, and only in those cases the aggrieved person can file the complaint. But the vague provisions under the Act allow any third person to file a complaint and the police will start their investigation,” she says.
The Act also puts the burden of proof explicitly on the accused, which goes against the usual tenets of criminal law in the country, explains Anjali Sheoran, advocate at the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Such provisions to have the accused prove innocence are included in some stringent Acts such as the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012. Sheoran adds that the existing sections of the IPC already cover forced religious conversions.
“Marrying on the basis of misrepresentation falls under cheating. For such crimes, Section 420 of the IPC is applicable. If the case is of rape on the pretext of marriage, then Section 376 is added. There is no need for separate legislation for religious conversion,” says Sheoran.
If convicted under the Act, there is a mandatory sentence of 1 to 5 years. “This is harsher than the offence warrants,” says Garg.
In courts and the police station, officials dismiss the fear that the Act could lead to vigilantism in the state.
Uday Singh Meena, Rohtak Superintendent of Police, says that unless there is any credible evidence of forced conversion or manipulation, the law may not be used. “If both the people are major and they have properly documented the marriage, I don’t think this law can be misused. People can put all kinds of complaints but during investigation, it would be clear,” says the SP.
Another senior police official who did not want to be named said that only time will tell if the police will take suo moto action on conversion cases.
“No law in the country stops the police from taking suo moto action. We will take it depending on the law-and-order situation in the area,” says the officer.
The need for the Act
In the state assembly in March last year, while CM Khattar said the law was needed because of the rising cases of forced religious conversions, Haryana home minister Anil Vij added that the law will act as a deterrent.
But the ‘127 FIRs’ cited by Khattar in the assembly, activists say, does not reflect in the police and government records.
Panipat-based Right to Information activist P.P. Kapoor asked for 2018 data from the offices of Director General of Police (DGP), National Commission for Women (NCW), Haryana State Commission for Women, and six districts in Haryana — Faridabad, Panipat, Gurugram, Yamuna Nagar, Hisar, and Rohtak.
He was informed that in three years, only four cases of alleged forced conversion have been filed. Two cases were from Panipat and one case each from Yamuna Nagar and Nuh. Later, two of these four cases— from Yamuna Nagar and Panipat—were found to be false during investigation.
“If this is not an issue for departments of the government, the police has no FIRs registered, so how is this such a big issue in the state? This shows that this is simply their political agenda to divide people,” says Kapoor.
Even police officials ThePrint spoke to said that the cases of ‘forced religious conversions’ are rare. In the SGM Nagar police station, there is no other case of forced conversion arising from interfaith marriages.
“In Rohtak, there are cases where people of different religions have married and the parents are not happy, but I have not seen anything on forced conversion or conversion for marriage in my tenure,” says Meena, the SP.
Even in courts, religious conversion cases are absent.
Working with women in the state, Jagmati Sangwan, vice president of All India Democratic Women’s Association (AIDWA), says that ignoring the real issues and bringing laws on religious conversion implies that the BJP government — in the state and at the Centre — is fuelling its own political agenda.
“Laws are enacted if the rate of that crime is substantial. The government should let people know what the scale of violence is in this case,” says Sangwan.
She explains that families killing their children in the name of ‘honour’ is a bigger crime in the region. “The [anti-conversion] law is also targeted at one community. This is being understood as a way by which the government is shaping the society as per its political ideology and wishes.”
Bringing the Act is also seen by political organisations as a way to deviate from the core issues of unemployment, health, and education in Haryana and elsewhere.
“The BJP wants people to be occupied and divided on caste and religious issues. Issues such as unemployment are bigger than conversion,” says Dharambir Parwal, national president and Haryana in-charge, Bhim Army.
The BJP head of Faridabad, however, dismisses such opposition to the Act.
“In seeking permission to convert, all that is asked is the wish to convert. Willingly adopting a religion is not a problem. But if it is happening under pressure—by deceit or offering incentives—then it’s a crime. The law will protect all of us. It will instill safety and gives a good message. It is not to suppress anyone. It is not against the Constitution,” says Gopal Sharma, Faridabad district president, BJP.
He adds that those who are opposing it are doing it only for political gains.
For a month, Dheeraj was fighting a lone battle to get his case registered till the foot soldiers of Bajrang Dal, a member of the Sangh Parivar, found him. Gau Raksha Bajrang force head, Bittu Bajrangi, who claims to have “saved hundreds of innocent Hindu girls from love jihad” alleges that the scale of the problem is much bigger than what the government data reflects.
“The scale of the problem is big not only in Haryana but everywhere in the country. Many people do not report the cases for fear of humiliation. I have dedicated my life to saving Hindu girls. I am doing this work for the last 30 years. I have brought girls back from Bihar, Kolkata, Mumbai, and many other places. I don’t leave jihadis,” says Bajrangi, sitting in a market square in Faridabad with his men.
Evidence of conversion
Dheeraj has named nine people as accused, including Sanskriti, Javed, his family, eyewitnesses to the marriage and the qazi. He has filed another case in a civil court in Faridabad calling the marriage invalid.
But his most important piece of evidence – a Rs 10 stamp paper on which Sanskriti has claimed that she is converting to Islam – is not strong enough, says Aamir Khan.
“The stamp paper has no evidentiary value in the Indian Evidence Act,” says Khan.
The Haryana Police, meanwhile, are keeping a close watch on the case. They tell ThePrint that once this case has an outcome, many old cases may be reopened using provisions of this Act.
“If it can be proven in the court that Sanskriti did not convert, then there is no issue with the marriage. But if she converted, then this is a valid case. The cases which have happened after the law was enacted may be reopened,” says SHO Kumar.
Dheeraj says that he has now become immune to societal judgements. His fight is not personal anymore. “I have come forward to fight the case because I want these jihadis to be investigated. I will not sit silent. I will use all the powers in this Act to fight my case,” he says.
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(Edited by Humra Laeeq)