Police on Friday arrested two people and booked eight others in Uttar Pradesh’s Sitapur district for allegedly conspiring to get a 19-year-old Hindu girl married to a Muslim man in the fourth case registered under the state’s new anti-conversion law, reports Pathikrit Chakraborty. Since the ordinance was promulgated on November 29, a total of 27 people have been booked and three arrested.
The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religious Ordinance, 2020, was cleared by governor Anandiben Patel on Saturday. Later that night, the FIR against Uwaish Ahmad was filed at Devarniyan police station in Bareilly. “This is the first case filed under the newly enacted law,” DIG (Bareilly zone) Rajesh Kumar Pandey said.
The Sitapur case, initially involving an unidentified person, had been registered on November 26, three days before the law took effect. The basis of the case was a complaint lodged by the father of a girl, saying she had been kidnapped for forced marriage. On Friday, provisions of the anti-conversion law were added to the case after the alleged kidnapper was identified as a 22-year-old van driver, Zubrail. The couple has been reported missing.
