Behind Allahabad High Court denying protection to inter-faith couples – UP’s anti-conversion law

In June 2023, a 24-year-old resident of Rampur in Uttar Pradesh eloped to Bareilly with her 30-year-old boyfriend. It was not a conventional marriage – the woman was Muslim and her husband Hindu. They got married at the town’s Banke Bihari temple and the woman converted to Hinduism.

However, the woman’s father was opposed to the union. He threatened to kill the couple to protect the honour of his family.

On July 5, the couple moved Allahabad High Court seeking protection from the woman’s father. On January 9, the court rejected their plea.

The reason was the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, popularly known as the anti-conversion law, which has put several inter-faith couples in the state in a bind.

In recent years, states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party have passed such laws to counter what they label “love jihad” – a Hindutva conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of trapping Hindu women in romantic relationships in order to convert them to Islam.

The 24-year-old woman and her husband were one of nine inter-faith couples to whom the Allahabad High Court denied protection in January alone.

In identical orders, Justice Saral Srivastava rejected pleas because the petitioners had not complied with the provisions of...

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