In Uttar Pradesh, yet another case of alleged grooming Jihad has surfaced wherein a Muslim man assumed a fake Hindu identity to entrap and marry a Hindu woman. The case pertains to state capital Lucknow where a man named Afzal allegedly identified himself as Rajiv and married a Hindu woman in the Arya Samaj Temple.
A few years after the marriage, the accused Afzal started pressuring his wife to give up her religion and embrace Islam. When the woman refused to abandon her religion for Islam, an enraged Afzal reportedly tried to burn her down, along with their children. However, the woman somehow managed to escape the fire and rushed to the nearby police station to file a complaint against the accused. Following her complaint, the police arrested the accused and slapped a case against him under the UP Anti-Conversion law.
As per the victim’s account, she had met Rajiv alias Afzal in 2009. Afzal had then described himself as a Hindu orphan and the duo had gotten married on 13 February 2009 at the Arya Samaj Temple. The couple had two children after their marriage. There was a dispute between the two when Rajiv alias Afzal insisted on keeping non-Hindu names of their children, the victim said. Rajiv’s insistence of keeping non-Hindu names of their children raised suspicions for the woman and she discovered that Rajiv was not a Hindu and that his real name was Mohammad Afzal Siddiqui. She also learnt that Afzal had parents and was not an orphan as he had claimed earlier.
In her complaint, the woman accused Afzal of not only pressuring her to convert her religion but also forced her to have physical relations with other men. When she raised her objections to this, she was subjected to domestic violence, the woman said. The woman also claims that she had filed complaints with the police several times about the violence inflicted on her by Afzal but no action was taken against him. According to the woman, on Wednesday night this week, when she was alone in the house with her children, Afzal bolted the door of the house from the outside and set it on fire.
The woman then called 112 control room and sought help. The police force was immediately sent to her place to rescue her, along with her children. The woman then filed a complaint with the police accusing Afzal of trying to burn her down with her children. A case has been registered under the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020 at the Thakurganj police station against Afzal, his parents and religious clerics for carrying out a murderous attack against the woman.