The Madhya Pradesh Police arrested a person named Saharukh under the state’s anti-love jihad law for hiding his religious identity from a 25-year-old Hindu woman and sexually exploiting her for over 5 months. The accused also abused the woman and threatened her to convert her religion to Islam, as per the complaint. The Police registered a case against the accused and arrested him on November 2.
According to the reports, accused Shahrukh (29) who was already married, had introduced himself as a Hindu person named Raju to the victim woman. The incident is said to have happened around January in Rajasthan’s Udaipur district. The woman, a resident of Indore, Madhya Pradesh had migrated with her friend to work as a housekeeping staff at a hotel in Udaipur.
The woman in the complaint confirmed that she met the accused when she had gone to Udaipur with her friend for a job. “On reaching the station, we booked an Ola cab to reach the hotel. Shahrukh was driving the vehicle. He introduced himself as Raju alias Rajkumar and tried to have a friendly conversation with us. We got acquainted and I started calling him every day to drop me from my residence to the hotel”, she said.
She added that they got married to each other after the accused proposed to her for marriage after three months or so. “We had become good friends in a short time as we used to meet daily. Later I realized that he liked me and also I had started liking him. He proposed to me for marriage one day and we got married after I agreed”, she stated. The accused and the victim got married seven months ago and started living together. The duo also registered their marriage in the court five months ago.
According to the woman, it is during the festival of Diwali that she discovered the truth about the accused. She discovered that her husband was a Muslim, his name was Shahrukh, and that he was already married to a Muslim woman. She also came to know that he was the father of two kids, one aged 7 and the other aged 4. “His wife had called during Diwali and I happened to talk to her. I told her that she had called the wrong number and that this cell phone number belonged to my husband Raju. But she argued and told me that the number belonged to her husband Shahrukh for years now. Later I checked his ID cards to discover that he was a Muslim and that I was cheated”, the victim woman was quoted.
On inquiring, the accused confessed that he was a Muslim and justified his crime by saying that a man is allowed to marry four women according to his religion. He also forced the victim to convert her religion to Islam and stay together with his family which included his first wife and two children. He also made her hostageand threatened her for life if she failed to accept Islam as her new religion.
The woman somehow managed to reach Indore and sought help from her family as the accused continued to threaten her over the phone. She also sought help from the members of the Hindu Jagran Manch and registered a Police complaint against the accused. The police then asked the woman to call the accused to Indore on the pretext of having a conversation, and later arrested him on November 2.
This is not the first case of grooming jihad that has been reported from the state of Madhya Pradesh. Earlier on October 29, in a similar case, the Madhya Pradesh Police had arrested a man identified as Sheikh Jahid under the state’s law against forced conversion attempts for hiding his religious identity from a Hindu woman and raping her for over 7 years. The accused had introduced himself as a Brahmin and had developed sexual relations with her.
Also, in August 2021, Aqib Ansari introduced himself as Aman Solanki to befriend a 21-year-old Hindu woman living on rent in his locality in the Dhar district of Madhya Pradesh. Reportedly, Aqib also visited temples to assert his ‘Hindu identity.’ He promised to marry the woman and established a sexual relationship with her and later forced her to convert her religion to Islam. The Police then filed a case against Aqib under IPC Section 376, Atrocities Act and Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Ordinance, 2020 Act.