Sarawa woman goes back to ‘husband’ after HC order
MEERUT: The Sarawa village incident in which a village pradhan and others had been charged with forced conversion and gang rape, witnessed another twist on Saturday, when cops handed over the woman, who had purportedly been forcefully converted, to one of the accused, Kaleem, after the Allahabad High Court instructed the district administration to take her where she wanted.
The decision comes in the wake of the hearing of the woman’s case in the High Court last month, in which she retracted from her earlier statement and informed the court that Kaleem was her husband and that she wanted to be with him.
It may be recalled that Kaleem and ten others, including the village pradhan, had been accused of forced conversion and gang rape by the woman in August, last year. She was a teacher in the village madrasa and at the time of the incident first coming to light, Hindu organisations had linked her association with the accused Kaleem as a case of ‘love jihad’, and had protested for almost a month, demanding his arrest along with several others.
Later the police claimed that they had solved the case. Reportedly the woman had an affair with Kaleem, a resident of neighbouring village Uldhan of Kharkhauda Police Station and had undergone an abortion at Meerut Medical College. When her family learnt of this, it caused an upheaval. The family lodged a case against 11 accused, including Kaleem, charging them with forced conversion and rape, and the woman was sent to Nari Niketan.
On October 15, this year, all inmates of Naari Niketan, including this woman, were presented before the High Court for hearing in their respective cases. With the woman being an adult, the court directed the district administration to send her wherever she desired. The woman’s family, allegedly, refused to take her back before the court, on October 12, 2015, saying that her mental condition was “not stable”.