Lucknow: Woman accuses her husband of running ‘love jihad’ campaign

LUCKNOW: A Muslim woman lodged an FIR against her husband at Indiranagar police station on Tuesday accusing him of running a love jihad campaign, trading in illegal weapons, harbouring foreign nationals and torturing her for dowry.
According to the complainant, her husband, Ashraf, heads Khanqah-e-Ashrafia Hussainia Qutbe, a dargah (shrine) in Bengaluru, Karnataka. She also named her mother-in-law as a co-accused.
ADCP, North, Prachi Singh said an FIR under the Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020, and on charges of extortion and dowry harassment has been lodged in this connection.
In the FIR, the woman, who hails from Lucknow, claimed that she got married to Ashraf in 2019. Initially, she got a warm welcome at her husband’s house in Bengaluru but soon he started pressuring her to befriend non-Muslim women and bring them home. The woman said she initially followed her husband’s diktats as she was afraid of losing him.
“Later, when I got pregnant, Ashraf forced me to undergo sex determintation test. When Ashraf and her mother got to know that the urborn baby was a girl, they thrashed me. They called my brother and demanded Rs 25 lakh for sparing my life. My brother paid Rs 7.5 lakh to them,” she alleged.
She claimed that Ashraf and his mother were running a love jihad campaign and added that at Ashraf’s behest, some hardliners of foreign origin tortured her. She also accused them of luring visitors at the shrine to further their love jihad campaign.
Terming that the dargah was the hub of illegal money and arms deals, she said: “Ashraf married a Hindu girl in due course of time and renamed her Madiha. She was later shifted to the shrine where she was given training in weaponry.”
The complainant claimed that Ashraf and his mother turned her out of their house saying they would allow her to return only if she paid Rs 17.5 lakh to them and brought four non-Muslim girls for religion conversion.
“I came back to Lucknow and gave birth to my daughter,” she said.