MORADABAD: UP’s new anti-conversion law is not retrospective, but it was used against the Muslim man from Moradabad who married a Hindu Dalit woman from Dehradun five months ago. While the woman is back home, the man and his elder brother are still in jail while police investigate. The 22-year-old woman, a graduate, had been working as an accountant in Dehradun when she met the man.
They fell in love in 2019 and got married on July 24 this year in a nikah ceremony. “I moved to Moradabad of my own accord … We were trying to register our marriage to make sure we were not violating any laws, even by mistake. Everything that happened after that is a nightmare,” she told TOI on Tuesday. “I want my husband back.”
The case against her husband may not stand legal scrutiny. “It’s a settled principle of law of interpretation that all laws are applicable with prospective effect (from that point forward) unless there is a specific provision that makes it applicable with retrospective effect,” Supreme Court lawyer Shobha Gupta told TOI.
“In other words, no penal provision can be made applicable from a date prior to its commencement,”. The UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religious Ordinance, 2020 came into effect on November 28. “Section 1(3) says, ‘It shall come into force at once.’ That means after the signature of the governor … Any marriage by way of conversion of religion which has taken place before or even on that day but before the governor signed it is not covered by the ordinance. It is not a criminal act,” she said.
“Invocation of the provisions of the ordinance with cases of religious conversion prior to this is not permissible in law and, therefore, unsustainable in courts,”. “When the couple was trying to register their marriage, the ordinance did not apply to them. They were married before the new law was promulgated,” Gupta said. The FIR, the woman said, was registered because of pressure from Bajrang Dal.