Bhopal: The first case of Love Jihad was registered in Bhopal on Wednesday. The new law was announced this month and this was the first incident where the cops have invoked sections of the MP Dharmik Swatantrata Act, 2020.
The Ashoka Garden police said the 23-year-old complainant is an engineering student. She befriended a youth, Asad, who had identified himself as Ashu in 2018 hiding his religion. Promising marriage, the accused raped her several times concealing his real identity. However, in 2019, when they visited Raisen, she found the accused offering prayers according to Muslim customs.
The girl turned suspicious and asked him his real name. He then identified himself as Asad. The girl stopped talking to him, but the accused kept following and stalking her.
The Ashoka Garden police said the accused, however, did not stop chasing and harassing the girl, asking her to change her religion and marry him. She, on her part, kept avoiding him. The police said Asad met her again in November after she returned from her hometown, Balaghat, after the lockdown and asked her to marry him, pressuring her to convert. Even as the girl refused to do so, he kept on mounting pressure on her. On January 11, Asad met the girl once again and, in front of the victim’s friends, asked her to marry him. It was then that one of her friends asked her to lodge a police complaint. On Wednesday, the girl and a few of her friends approached the Ashoka Garden police. The accused, Asad, a resident of Aishbagh, was booked under sections 376 2 N, 354 D, 294, 323 and 506 IPC and 3/5 of the MP Dharmik Swatantrata Act, 2020.
