A novel case of Love Jihad has been reported from Deopur village of Maharashtra’s Dhule district. On Thursday, the Dhule Police registered an FIR against Arshad Malik and his father Salim Malik for trapping a Hindu woman (24) in a relationship under a false name and sexually assaulting her for around two years. The police have booked the accused under sections 376(2)(n), 377, 327, 504, 506, 34, and 323 of the Indian Penal Code and have launched an investigation into the case.
The complaint was filed by the victim woman on December 1, 2022, a copy of which has been obtained by OpIndia. The woman in the complaint said that the accused Arshad Malik had introduced himself as a Hindu person named Harshad Mali and then persuaded her to get married to him. The complaint read that the victim woman was also raped by Arshad’s father, Salim Malik who is named as the second accused in the case.
According to the complaint, the accused have been harassing the woman and raping her since January 1, 2021. The saga began in the year 2016 when the victim woman first got married to Gaurav in the year 2016. The duo also had a child together but the circumstances for the woman happened to change after her husband died in a road accident in 2019.
Her deceased husband had sold their house already and left the woman with just Rs 2.5 lakhs. The woman then decided to study for a government job and so she joined Maharashtra Police Bharti classes at Khandesh Academy in the year 2020. There she met prime accused Arshad Malik who introduced himself as a Hindu named Harshad Mali. The duo became friends and exchanged phone numbers. They began chatting and talking over the phone while they also met each other daily at the academy.
The victim woman in the complaint added that the accused one day took her on his bike to the nearby jungle and raped her. “He forced himself upon me. I kept on refusing, opposing but he sexually assaulted me. He also video graphed the incident and used the tape to blackmail me later,” the woman said in the FIR filed on December 1.
“After that incident, I stopped talking to him. But he blackmailed me saying that he would distribute the video to the public if I stopped talking to him. He later confessed that he was in love with me and that he wanted us to stay together. He also said that he was ready to get married to me but then he proposed for a live-in relationship. I was scared that he would blackmail me again so I agreed to a live-in relationship,” she added.
The 24-year-old complainant said that it is during their live-in stay on July 2, 2021, that she discovered that Harshad was a Muslim man and that his original name was Arshad Malik. “On asking about his identity, he shut me up saying that these things hardly mattered in love and relationships. I thought he was madly in love with me so I trusted him. Later we shifted to Amalner and Ulhasnagar cities of the state. I also had my son named Vivek from the first marriage with me,” she narrated.
The woman said that she gave Arshad Rs 2.5 lakhs that she had attained from the will of her first husband. She also mentioned in the complaint that Arshad had demanded the gold chain which her deceased husband had gifted to her. “I refused to give the ornament to him which enraged him. He then hit me and also gave me motorbike silencer burn wounds on my hand. He snatched the chain and informed his parents in Dhule about me and my son,” the complaint read.
The victim woman and the prime accused happened to stay in Ulhasnagar city for around 4 months in a rented apartment. However, later Arshad’s father arrived at the residence and brutally raped the woman with permission of Arshad, as per the woman’s complaint. “Arshad and his father raped me for several days. I got pregnant. Later they took me to their home in Dhule and got me married to Arshad according to the Islamic rituals. After the wedding his father kept on sexually assaulting me several times despite knowing that I was pregnant with a child,” the victim stated.
According to the complaint, the woman was given a new Islamic name and was forcefully converted to Islam. The family members of Arshad including his mother Taslim and sister Arsheen also began pressuring the woman to perform ‘khatna’ (circumcision) on her small son named Vivek. On refusing the family members physically assaulted her amid her pregnancy. The woman then sent her son Vivek to his grandmother’s home in Dhule.
Adding the dreadful details to the case, the complainant said, “I gave birth to my second child in August this year. But I was not getting proper healthcare. Instead, my father-in-law and my husband continued to rape me together. My mother-in-law also tortured me mentally.” She said that after the Shraddha Walkar murder case happened, Arshad and his father would issue her threats saying that “Aftab cut Shraddha into 35 pieces but we would cut you into 70 pieces.”
The woman somehow managed to flee from Arshad’s home after she was issued death threats by both the accused on November 29. She reached out to her earlier mother-in-law (deceased husband Gaurav’s mother) and sought help. Meanwhile, she and her family member continued to get death threats from Arshad and his family including his father Salim and mother Taslim.
The woman reached the Deopur Police station on December 1 and lodged a police complaint against Arshad and his father Salim. The police have booked the accused under sections 376(2)(n), 377, 327, 504, 506, 34 and 323 of the Indian Penal Code and have launched an investigation in the case.
Earlier a similar case of love jihad was reported from Shrirampur area of Maharashtra, where Aman Sheikh (24) who posed himself as Amrut Ram Khairnar had lured a 17-year-old Dalit girl and abducted her from Shirdi where she had gone with her family to visit the Sai Baba temple. The accused also had forged documents, including Aadhaar Card, to convince the victim girl that he was a Hindu, reports said.
Also on November 12, a minor tribal girl was abducted by a person named Imran Sheikh from Malegaon, Nashik. The girl had disappeared from her home while she was alone. The family of the girl and several Adivasi and Hindu organisations then alleged that the police were not taking the case seriously as the victim girl belonged to the tribal community.