Uttarakhand: Purola ‘Love Jihad’ Case Flops in Court of Law

Dehradun: The Purola ‘Love Jihad’ case in Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand, which in the summer of 2023 was used to spread ‘Islamophobia’ in the hill state of Uttarakhand by the ruling BJP/RSS (Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) combine, driving away the miniscule Muslim population from the town following threats by Hindu groups, has failed in a court of law.

A year after the incident, which grabbed national and international headlines, a local sessions court of Uttarkashi has acquitted two men, a Hindu and a Muslim, accused of kidnapping  a minor Hindu girl, of the charges.  The two men – Uvaid Khan, 22, and his friend Jitendra Saini, 24 --were accused of trying to abduct a minor Hindu girl with an intention to convert her into Islam as part of “Love Jihad” and arrested. Both were accused of talking to the girl with an intention to elope. They were charged for alleged kidnapping and procurement of a minor under Sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and sexual assault under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act (POCSO).  

“Love Jihad” is a term coined by BJP/RSS, accusing Muslim men of luring “unsuspecting” Hindu women into romantic relationships to ultimately convert them to Islam.

“Both the accused were acquitted by the court as the charges could not be corroborated and the denial by the girl herself,” Halim Baig, a defence lawyer based in Uttarkashi said.

Read Also: Uttarakhand: Open Call for 'Muslim-Free Purola', but Why are Police, Govt Silent?

The incident was followed by an orchestrated campaign by Right-wing organisations against the entire Muslim community in Purola. Their shops and homes were attacked during huge processions organised at the call of local traders’ bodies backed by ruling BJP in the state.

The Right-wing organisations, namely, Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Devbhoomi Raksha Abhiyan, gave threats and warnings to Muslims to leave Purola by June 15, 2023, accusing them of indulging in ‘Love Jihad’.

Out of 40 Muslim families in Purola, 14 left the town when posters were pasted on their shops and some of them were marked with a black cross mark, a reminder of the Nazi era Germany.

A ‘Mahapanchayat’ was also called by Right-wing Hindu organisations on June 15 calling for the ouster of Muslims from all the hilly areas. After the intervention of the Nainital High Court, the ‘Mahapanchayat’ was cancelled but the slander campaign against the minority community continued unabated.  

False Charges, Finds Court

In less than a year after the incident, the Uttarkashi session court ruled on May 10,2024, that the allegations against the two youth were false. Interestingly, during the trial, the 14-year-old girl who was reportedly being abducted, told the court that the police had tutored her to accuse Khan and Saini. 

The court also found inconsistencies in the statement of the sole eyewitness in the case – Aashish Chunar, a member of the RSS. Both the accused who were in jail since June 2023 were granted bail in July 2023 in the case.

Uttarkashi sessions Judge Gurubaksh Singh, during the 19 hearings in the case between August 2023 till May 2024, found the charges of kidnapping, procurement of a minor and sexual assault against the duo were false.

Chunar, a RSS member, who runs a computer shop in Purola, the main eyewitness of the incident, had called the uncle of the minor girl in question, informing him that two men near the town’s petrol pump were trying to get his niece to climb onto a tempo. According to the first information report (FIR) filed by the uncle of the girl at Purola police station, the men were trying to take her to Naugaon, a town 18 km away. They duo fled after Chunar intervened, according to the complaint. The RSS worker then brought the girl to his shop.

In the complaint, the uncle described what his niece claimed to have told him, that Khan and Saini had brought her to the petrol pump through deceit. Khan had introduced himself as Ankit. At the petrol pump, they called a tempo driver and tried to lure her into marriage and take her away when Chunar and another person saw her and rescued her, the complaint said.

During the trial, when the minor’s uncle was cross-examined by the defendants’ advocates, he told the court that his niece “did not tell him anything about the incident” and that he wrote the complaint “on Aashish Chunar’s instructions”. “I wrote what Aashish Chunar told me,” the court’s judgement quotes him as saying.

During cross-examination, the girl’s aunt also told the court that her niece “did not tell her about the incident and did not name the accused”. “She only said that she had left the house to get some clothes stitched and that Aashish Chunar then took her to his shop,” said the judgement.

Khan and Saini were produced before Chunar during the trial. Chunar told the court that on May 26, he saw two men talking to the minor. But Khan and Saini, he added, were not those two men. Chunar denied the allegation that the minor’s uncle wrote the police complaint on his instruction.

Importantly, the minor girl’s account in court contradicted her statement made on May 27, 2023, to a civil judge under Section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code.  In her statement, she said that after she had asked them for directions to the tailor’s shop, Khan and Saini took her to the petrol station and called a tempo. “They held my hand and tried to make me sit inside the tempo,” she said. “I said let go of my hand. Then my relative Aashish Chunar came. The two men ran away once they saw him. He [Chunar] sat me down in his shop and called my family.”

During her cross-examination, the minor told the court that the police had tutored her to make the statement implicating Khan and Saini. “Before I gave the statement, the police had explained to me what all I had to say and that is what I told madam [civil judge],” she said. “I did not read the statement but only signed it.

In sessions court, the minor girl recounted what had happened that day. “She mostly said that she asked the accused about a tailor’s shop,” the judgement said. “She went to the tailor’s shop with the accused. She also said that the accused were not taking her anywhere. Upon cross-examination, she said that the accused had not followed her.”

Judge Singh noted that the prosecution had not put forth any statement or evidence to prove that Khan and Saini had touched the minor with sexual intent.  “Considering the material available on the record, this special court has come to the conclusion that from all the oral and documentary evidence presented by the prosecution, the prosecution of accused Uvaid Khan and Jitendra Saini is not proven beyond reasonable doubt,” he wrote in the judgement. Taking all this into account, he acquitted Khan and Saini.

The writer is a freelance journalist based in Dehradun, Uttarakhand.