The Uttar Pradesh police have lodged a second FIR under the newly promulgated Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020.
A case was registered under Sections 3 and 5 of the ordinance in Mau district in Purvanchal. In the complaint lodged by a prominent gold trader at the Chiraiyakot Police Station, he has accused a local man of allegedly abducting his daughter on the eve of her wedding.
Additional Superintendent of Police Tribhuvan Nath Tripathi said a boy and girl from different communities in Molnaganj village had eloped. “The boy was already married,” said the officer on Friday.
The FIR also invoked Sections 366 (kidnapping, abducting or inducing woman to compel her marriage) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code.
“The search for them is on. We are taking action,” said the officer.
A 21-year-old man in Bareilly, Uwaish Ahmed, had become the first person to be booked under the new ordinance against unlawful conversion. He was arrested on Wednesday. The accused was also booked under the Sections 3 and 5 of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, which was cleared by the State Cabinet recently and promulgated on November 27. The FIR was lodged against the accused person in Deorania police station on charges of allegedly trying to coerce a 20-year-old married Hindu woman to convert her to his religion and marry him.
The new ordinance makes religious conversion a cognisable and non-bailable offence, inviting penalties of up to 10 years in prison, if found to be effected for marriage or through misrepresention, force, undue influence, coercion, allurement or other allegedly fraudulent means.