Govt asks police to probe inter-faith love marriages in last 3 yrs
Order from DGP office wants all instances of kidnapping, eloping and marriage between Hindu or Muslim boys and girls of other faiths to check forced conversions
By Gitesh Shelke
Posted On Monday, November 21, 2011In what appears to be based on reported incidences of love jihad or Romeo jihad in the state — Muslim youth marrying non-Muslim girls or Hindu youth marrying non-Hindu girls only to convert them to their faith and then ditching them — and the Kerala High Court’s cognisance of the existence of this new social evil, the office of state Director General of Police has issued an order asking police to probe all marriages between such parties that have taken place in the past three years.
Nearly nine months ago, Pune rural police had received a complaint alleging that a Muslim organisation based in Khed on the Pune-Nasik highway was offering Rs 3 lakh to Muslim youth who marry non-Muslim girls with the latter’s consent.
While the police investigation didn’t throw up anything substantial, the complaint had alleged that non-Muslim girls were being trapped with false promises of love and marriage by Muslim youth. After convincing them to convert to Islam for the sake of marriage, the youth abandoned them to their own fate.
The DGP office order expects all incidents of elopement, kidnapping, forced marriages and other exploitations involving Muslim or Hindu men and women of other faiths are to be probed by the police, if there are any.
According to the order, police stations across the state should locate such couples where a non-Muslim/Hindu girl had married a Muslim/Hindu man after the man had professed his love for her, or in which the non-Muslim/Hindu girl had eloped with a Muslim/Himdu boy and had got married.
There are also chances of kidnapping and forced marriages by Muslim/Hindu boys, in which cases the girl of another faith is forced to convert — a strategy that is suspected to have been developed by a section of fundamentalists to convert others to their faith.
‘Love Jihad’, also known as Romeo Jihad, is an alleged surreptitious activity under which young Muslim boys and men target college-going girls or single women from non-Muslim communities for conversion to Islam by feigning love. In India, this could well be working in the other way too, where Muslim girls are entrapped by Hindu youth.
Many Hindu and Christian organisations have demanded probes into such marriages where a non-Muslim girl has got married to a Muslim boy. Such incidents were first reported in Kerala and Karnataka following which state officials have taken serious steps and investigations were ordered in 2009 to decipher the truth behind such marriages.
However, Muslim organisations in these two states denied such incidents of forced marriages or that women are being allegedly trapped in love by Muslim boys to convert them to Islam. It is suspected that some Muslim organisations are funding such youths to indulge in such activities. The organisations are said to pay handsomely.
The state government in its order, issued by the DGP’s office, states that every police station must probe such marriages that have taken place in the recent past (within 2-3 years). The DGP office has demanded this information from police stations pertaining to such incidents, number of such marriages.
A state-level meeting has been called in Mumbai next week to discuss further steps to probe such incidents in the state. The DGP office will conduct a review study and a detailed report will be submitted to the state government.
A senior police officer with the city police commissionerate said police will try to locate such couples as there are directions to the effect from the state government. “I cannot comment more on the orders as the outcome of such a study will be out only after the state government prepares a detailed report,” he said.
Source: Pune Mirror
Courtesy : Neeraj Diwan 
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