India Supreme Court to hear ‘Love Jihad’ cases

NEW DELHI: India’s Supreme Court will begin hearing a case today that prosecutors say shows how Islamic State sympathisers are using “Love Jihad” — marrying Hindu women and converting them to Islam — to win recruits and spread their message.

Over the past 28 months, the National Investigation Agency has picked up dozens of interfaith couples in Kerala state to question them about their marriages.

The women, all Hindus who married Muslim men, were asked “extremely personal” questions during interrogations, two police officers from the agency said.

Questions include: “Did you sleep with your husband before getting married? Did he suggest you visit Islamic shrines before marriage? Did he blackmail you before you converted to Islam?”

Investigators were looking for cases of “Love Jihad”, a term publicised by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and other hardline Hindu groups soon after they helped propel Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power in 2014. It referred to what these groups said was an Islamist campaign to convert Hindu women through seduction and marriage.

Police investigations at the time found no evidence of any organised strategy, and the claim was widely ridiculed. But since then, the NIA began focusing on Kerala, a southern state along the Arabian Sea with strong economic links to the Middle East.

It investigated 89 cases of “Love Jihad” and found nine to be alliances planned by people linked to the Islamic State, two NIA sources said. The NIA plans to present evidence in all nine cases to the Supreme Court.

The agency declined to disclose the evidence they had, but in two cases, the agency was examining money sent from an Islamic school in Iraq to the women’s bank accounts. In another case, a woman and her husband had shared IS videos with people in their Kerala village, sources said.

The opposition said the investigation showed the government was allowing RSS and others to use the state apparatus to further an agenda of establishing Hindu dominance in India, where 13 per cent of its population of 1.32 billion is Muslim.

RSS, which founded the first iteration of Modi’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party six decades ago, believes India is fundamentally a Hindu nation.

Since Modi’s election, RSS has expanded its influence, and either it or its affiliates now run key ministries. Reuters

REUTERS PIC Akhila Ashokan, 25, whose marriage to a Muslim was annulled at her Hindu father’s request, arriving in Kochi, India, on Saturday. She will give her testimony to the Supreme Court today.