One of the first to be charged under Uttar Pradesh’s controversial anti-conversion law, a 32-year-old Muslim man from Muzaffarnagar district, can’t be arrested yet, the Allahabad High Court ruled.
Nadeem and his brother Salman were named in the complaint of Akshay Kumar Tyagi, who claims that Nadeem frequented his home in Muzaffarnagar and had ‘trapped’ his wife Parul with the aim of converting her. He also alleged that he gifted her a smartphone and had promised to marry her.
Taking up a petition filed by Nadeem to scrap the FIR registered against him, the court said that the police cannot take any coercive action against him yet, granting him protection from arrest till the next date of hearing.
"Victim is admittedly an adult who understands her well-being. She, as well as the petitioner, have a fundamental right to privacy and being grown-up adults who are aware of the consequences of their alleged relationship," the court said in an important statement that could affect similar cases.
Uttar Pradesh adopted an anti-conversion ordinance in November as an apparent solution to 'love jihad', a right-wing ‘conspiracy theory’ where Muslim men try to seduce Hindu women to have them convert their religion.
The move has been severely criticised. The term “'love jihad’ is not defined by law", the Union Home Ministry had told the Parliament in February, adding that no such case had been reported by the central agencies.
(With inputs from NDTV)
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