A month on, UP Police lodged 16 FIRs, arrested 54 under anti-conversion law

LUCKNOW: The Uttar Pradesh police has lodged 16 FIRs, booked 86 people and arrested 54 of them ever since the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Law, 2020, was implemented a month ago.
Police said they are yet to arrest 31 accused. Maximum 26 people were booked in Etah under the provisions of new law.
A senior police official at the DGP headquarters said most of the FIRs were lodged on the complaints of family members of the women kidnapped for forced conversion.
“Acting on CM Yogi Adityanath’s directives, clear instructions were issued to cops to act against forced religious conversions,” another police officer said.
He added that in many cases people were unaware of the new law and cops counselled the parents of the girl and the boy willing for an inter-faith marriage to seek permission of the magistrate before conversion.
In the last one month, two FIRs each were lodged in Bijnor and Shahjahanpur and one each in Firozabad, Etah, Bareilly, Moradabad, Kannauj, Hardoi, Sitapur, Saharanpur, Muzaffarnagar, Azamgarh, Mau and Gautam Budh Nagar.
On December 17, a local businessman in Etah district had lodged a case at Jalesar police station against Mohammed Javed for kidnapping and unlawfully converting a Hindu woman to Islam. Police arrested 14 members of Javed’s family while 12 others, including the main accused, are still on the run.
In another case in Mau, an FIR was lodged on December 3 at Chiraiyakot police station against 16 people under the new law. Shabab Khan aka Rahul (38) and 13 of his acquaintances were booked for kidnapping. Police said that Khan, who is already married, and his associates, allegedly abducted a 27-year-old woman on the eve of her wedding on November 30 with the intent to convert her for marriage. Later, eight persons were arrested while eight others are at large.
At least 12 people in Etah, eight in Mau, five in Shahjahanpur, four in Saharanpur and one each in Sitapur and Muzaffarnagar are still on the run.