14 BOOKED IN MAU UNDER NEW ANTICONVERSION LAW

VARANASI: A case was registered against 14 people under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance-2020 at Chiraiyakot police station in Mau district on Thursday, the police said.

Superintendent of police, Mau, Sushil Ghule, said the case was registered on the basis of a complaint. The police also said that the complainant alleged that his 30-year-old daughter was kidnapped by one Shabab Khan aka Rahul for religious conversion. He filed the complaint against 14 people, including Shabab Khan, stating that the wedding of his daughter was scheduled on November 30. But on November 29, Shabab Khan coaxed her and kidnapped her with the intent to convert her religion, the father alleged.

On the basis of this complaint, the case was registered under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code and the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, the police officer said.

Police teams have been deployed to find the woman. The accused will be arrested soon, the police added.

Uttar Pradesh governor Anandiben Patel had approved the ordinance on November 28. The first case under the new law was registered within hours against one Owaish Ahmad in Bareilly the same night. He was arrested later. The ordinance has provisions to check religious conversions carried out by “allurement, coercion, force, fraud, or marriage.” The state cabinet cleared the law earlier in November, targeting what many right-wing outfits term “love jihad”, where Muslim men marry Hindu women with the alleged aim of changing the latter’s religion after marriage.

According to the ordinance, marriages, where the intention is to change the woman’s religion, will be declared null and void.