The anti-conversion law in Uttar Pradesh enables vigilante violence

The Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly in session on July 30, 2024.
| Photo Credit: PTI

On July 30, the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly amended the State’s stringent anti-conversion law of 2021 to make it even more repressive. The maximum jail term was increased to life imprisonment, securing bail was made more arduous, and the scope of illegal conversion was widened to include promise of marriage and trafficking. These changes express the intentions of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to intensify its attempts to criminalise interfaith relationships and consensual conversions to minority faiths, as part of its Hindutva ideology.

The amended section

The Assembly also amended Section 4 of the U.P. Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, to allow “any person” to act as a complainant. This means that whether that person was being unlawfully converted or not becomes immaterial. For instance, a right-wing activist could lodge an FIR against a Christian prayer meeting, accusing its organisers of trying to convert the participants to Christianity through allurements. The police would be authorised to register an FIR on the activist’s complaint even if nobody at the meeting lodged a complaint that they were being unlawfully converted.

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Section 4 of the original law was much more specific in its scope. It allowed “any aggrieved person, his or her parents, brother, sister or any other person related to him or her by blood, marriage or adoption” to lodge an FIR. However, third-party elements, such as police officers, Sangh Parivar activists, and elected local representatives, regularly lodged complaints under the law. This brazen disregard for law has allowed unruly elements to disturb prayer meetings and peaceful gatherings claiming that these events were being used to coerce or allure “naive” and poor Hindus to turn to Christianity. Muslim men in consensual relationships with Hindu women are also victims of such vigilantes.

In September, in an affidavit submitted in the Allahabad High Court, the government doubled down on the right of its police force – and by extension, any other third-party element – to act as complainants under the law. The matter reached the Court after a pastor from Jaunpur, Durga Yadav, was booked for allegedly trying to convert Hindus to Christianity. Mr. Yadav challenged the FIR in Court saying the complaint had been lodged by a police officer and not by an alleged victim. The Court expressed concern over this trend in the State and sought a detailed response from the government, which pleaded that police officers did qualify as ‘aggrieved’ persons in cases of unlawful conversion as they handled law and order. The government also argued that the powers granted to a police officer under the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS) were not controlled by Section 4 of the unlawful conversion law.

What is worrying is that while amending the Section, the government had acknowledged that the competency to lodge FIRs was being redefined to “resolve certain difficulties” that arose in its “interpretation” in several cases. A substantial number of accused persons have challenged the legality of such FIRs lodged by third-party elements. In many cases, accused persons have received legal relief after courts questioned the locus of the complainants.

While the amended law became operative in August, the question of legality in several cases lodged before the amendment was brought about persists. By amending the law, and defending the ‘illegal’ FIRs lodged prior to it, the government has empowered the police with the right to criminalise peaceful religious meetings and gatherings. In a society where social gatherings and prayer meetings are a common part of culture and a way to social uplift for historically oppressed communities, the power of the police and vigilante groups to criminalise their religious or personal lives or their personal relationships can have a chilling effect.

Matter of interpretation

The courts have been inconsistent in the way they have interpreted the original Section 4. Last February, a Division Bench of the High Court, hearing the petition of Jose Prakash George and 36 others, ruled that the embargo under Section 4 was absolute. It said that the complainant, a Vishva Hindu Parishad member, was not competent to lodge the FIR. The judges stressed that the phrase ‘any aggrieved person’ was qualified by the subsequent categories (his/her parents, siblings, spouse), which whittled down its scope. The Court said the ‘aggrieved person’ would have to be personally aggrieved by the unlawful conversion. However, in the Daisy Joseph case (2024), another Bench of the High Court postulated that an FIR could be lodged by ‘any person’ under the BNSS in the capacity of an informant. It added that the issue needed more legal consideration.

Similarly, in July, a Bareilly court acquitted two Hindu men of unlawful conversion charges and ordered legal action against the police officers for falsely implicating them on the basis of a complaint by a Hindutva activist. The court ruled that the FIR itself was illegal. However, in an another case, a lower court in Lucknow convicted 16 people for mass conversion in September, on the complaint of an officer of the U.P. Anti-Terrorist Squad.

The Durga Yadav petition is still being heard in the High Court. Whichever way the court interprets the original Section 4, there is no ambiguity about the amended clause, which gives the police unhindered powers and vigilante groups the full backing of the legal system to harass and intimidate religious minorities and interfaith couples as part of a political agenda and threaten personal liberty.

Omar Rashid is a journalist based in New Delhi