Ghaziabad couple held in religious conversion case acquitted

Ghaziabad: Two years on, a city couple could finally breathe free after being acquitted of the charges in a case of forceful religious conversion.An additional sessions court, presided over by Shiv Kumar Tiwary, on Tuesday acquitted the couple, whose names were not mentioned in the original FIR. On Aug 18, the couple — Hapur Dehat residents Seema and her husband Mahendra Kumar — had obtained bail after spending two years in jail. According to the prosecution's narrative, during the investigation, police found their involvement and arrested them in the last week of July 2023. The court has now concluded that the complainant — Ashish Kumar — said on oath that police forced him to file the FIR. "Furthermore, the prosecution did not examine any other factual witness who confirmed that the accused Mahendra and Seema induced or pressured anyone to convert. Therefore, based solely on the documentary evidence presented by the prosecution, it cannot be concluded that the accused pressured or induced anyone to convert on the basis of these documents," the court noted while acquitting the couple of all charges. The prosecution presented five witnesses, including the complainant and the two approvers, whose names were dropped from the FIR.Appearing as PW1, complainant Ashish did not identify the accused and said that he never met them. Refusing the statements in the application given to police, he said that he was forced by police to write such an application.The matter relates to the FIR lodged at Modinagar police station under Section 3/5 (1) of the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, against one Rohit and his mother, Kusum, accusing them of converting Hindu families to Christianity by allurement.The case was lodged on the complaint of undergraduate student Ashish on July 23, 2023. Police conducted a preliminary investigation and found that those named in the FIR were not involved in carrying out the conversions directly, so they convinced them to be approvers. A chargesheet under Section 3/5 (1) of this Act was filed against Seema and Mahendra Kumar on Oct 16 of the same year. The court framed charges on May 8, 2024 and upon denial of charges by the accused, the trial began. Approvers Rohit and Kusum said that they knew Ashish as their next-door neighbour but had no links with the accused.Testifying as PW4, Kusum Devi said that they follow Hinduism and do not have a church at home. "My son-in-law Bablu is known to Mahendra and his wife, but to my knowledge, they never carry out conversions," she told the court, adding that she or her family was never approached by Mahendra or his wife Seema for converting to Christianity.Defence counsel Aleem Alvi said that the police confiscated three mobile phones and some literature from the residence of his client and tried to present them in court as evidence for their involvement in religious conversions. However, the court observed that from the recovery report tabled as Exhibit A-4 and Exhibit A-5, it was not clear which person was converted to another religion.