Karnataka man booked under UP conversion law

Uttar Pradesh police booked a 22-year-old Muslim man from Karnataka under the state’s new anti-conversion ordinance for allegedly abducting a 19-year-old woman from her home in Gorakhpur and converting her for marriage. Police have sent a team to Karnataka’s Bijapur town to arrest the man, who is also facing abduction charges under the Indian Penal Code, authorities said on Thursday.

The woman’s father lodged missing person report on January 5 after she did not return home from college, Chiluatal station house officer Neeraj Kumar Rai said.

“Fresh charges under the new anti-conversion ordinance were added after the girl’s call records showed she was in touch with a Karnataka man named Mohammad Mehboob Alam, for over a year. The girl’s father alleged Mehboob concealed his religious identity to kidnap his daughter,” said DIG Gorakhpur Jogendra

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Kumar. The fresh FIR was registered on January 11.

In the FIR, the woman’s father alleged that the man befriended his daughter last year through social media. Police said everything would be clear once the accused and the kidnapped woman are traced.

The case was lodged under sections 366 (kidnapping, abduction or inducing woman to compel her into marriage ) and 363 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code, besides the Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020 that outlaws religious conversion through coercion, allurement, fraud or marriage, the SHO said.

“I reached my daughter to Sardar Patel Institute of Technology in Gorakhpur on January 4 but she did not return home that night. On January 5, I lodged a missing complaint. Later, I found that my daughter was in touch with Mehboob on Facebook since November 2019. I also found that Mehboob had come down to Gorakhpur and kidnapped my daughter,” the girl’s father stated in his complaint.