A court in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal has acquitted a 26-year-old Muslim man who was booked under the Madhya Pradesh Freedom of Religion Act as the prosecution failed to prove allegations of forced religious conversion and coercion. This comes as the complainant, a Hindu woman who married the accused, denied all the charges of threats, frauds, or pressure before the judicial magistrate.
The couple were initially neighbors, and then they became friends; eventually they fell in love with each other. The couple decided to get married after a year of relationship. Aware of the difficulties it can bring due to differences in religion, they sought protection under the law.
The FIR was registered by local police on a complaint that alleged the unlawful conversion for marriage. The accused, Saiyyad Khan, was charged under sections of the state’s anti-conversion law and alleged that the accused used a fake identity to marry and pressured him to change her religion. However, during the trial, the woman did not agree to the allegations.
On February 7, 2025, the couple moved to Bhopal district court to register their marriage. A group of lawyers allegedly assaulted Saiyyad Khan for forcefully converting the woman to Islam. Khan was later taken to MP Nagar police station, where he was allegedly assaulted again and then booked under sections 3 and 5 of the Act by Bankhedi police, the Hindustan Times reported.
The woman earlier alleged that Khan pressured him to change her name, convert, and marry him. But during cross-examination, she confessed that she was neither threatened nor allured.
“There were serious contradictions between witness statements. The prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the accused pressured the woman for conversion or marriage by fraudulent means,” the district and additional session judge Archana Raghuvanshi said as reported by the Hindustan Times.
The woman’s mother said that she went to the court of her own will. In the meantime, the woman’s brother also denied the allegations. The court noted that the prosecution failed to produce evidence for the forced conversion.
Dr Syed Naseer Hussain, a Congress leader and Member of Parliament, taking to X, said, “Saiyyad Khan is a victim of the BJP’s politics of intimidation and hatred. He and his partner, belonging to different faiths, went to court to marry under the Special Marriage Act. Instead, he was assaulted by lawyers, arrested under allegations of forced conversion, and made to suffer the loss of his livelihood and home. The court has now acquitted him after the prosecution’s key witnesses, including the woman herself, refused to support its case.
“A man exercising his legal right to marry was assaulted, arrested and persecuted because his choice did not fit the BJP’s communal agenda. How many more lives must be destroyed in the name of love jihad? The BJP government must answer for the hatred it has normalised and the fear it has imposed on citizens who dare to choose their own lives,” he added.
