The headlines called it a case of "forcible conversion". A Hindu girl elopes with a man who woos her with a Hindu name but turns out to be Muslim. He coerces her to convert before she escapes and comes to the police. But at closer look, the case reported last week from Indore in Madhya Pradesh has the same bundle of discrepancies and contradictions that have defined the other cases of so-called love jihad.
In the infamous Meerut case that propelled "love jihad" into the national headlines in August, the role of the Hindutva groups didn't come in full view until the case collapsed three months later. But in Indore, not only are Hindutva groups leading from the front, an activist of the Bajrang Dal has turned into the gatekeeper to the woman and her family.
The case as reported in the media
In October 2013, 22-year-old Asha (name changed) ran away from her home in Indore to elope with her boyfriend. Fifteen months later, she was back home and on February 5, she filed a police complaint against the man, who she had gone on to marry, accusing him of kidnapping, rape and forcing her to convert to Islam.
This week, the Indore police will send an investigation team to Meerut, the husband’s hometown. But there is a sense of hesitation at the Annapurna police station where the case has been filed.
“Since an FIR has been lodged, it is our duty to investigate,” said DS Chauhan, the police officer who heads the Annapurna police station. “But it seems to us that the young woman knew from the beginning that the man was Muslim.”
The woman who had affairs
The police was the first stop in our search for Asha’s story, and the police were not kind.
Chauhan, who is heading investigations into the case, had decided to slot the young woman into the “type that drinks and has affairs”, and claimed with confidence that her case did not hold much weight.
How did he know?
"We see so many cases every day, we can tell the character of a person at one glance – kaun randi hai, kaun peeta hai, kaun kya hai,” he said. We can tell who is a slut, who is a drunkard, or anything else.
Asha was working at a fast food chain in 2013, he claimed, when she met Abdul Rahman, a young man from Meerut who was in Indore for reasons that no one can quite recall. “Their affair went on for a few months, and her parents knew about it," Chauhan said. "They opposed it on religious grounds. That is why she ran away with him.”
When she left, her parents filed a missing person’s complaint, but several days later, they recorded another statement with the police claiming that they were now in touch with their daughter on the phone.
More than a year passed. Last month, on January 11, Asha returned home to Indore. Three weeks later, she showed up at the Annapurna police station, accompanied by a man who was “either her brother or her friend”.
She claimed that the man she eloped with had introduced himself as Ajay Singh Pawar, but he later turned out to be Abdul Rahman. He forced her into a nikah ceremony and compelled her to accept Islam. She also said she was beaten up and sexually assaulted.
The police have charged Rahman under eight sections of the Indian Penal Code, including cheating, kidnapping, sexual assault, wrongful confinement, and criminal intimidation.
An abandoned home
The address given for Asha in the police first information report is of a home in one of Indore’s densely populated middle class localities. But the place is now occupied by another family.
“They sold this house and moved out more than a year ago, after their daughter ran away and they became famous in this area,” said a neighbour. “None of us know where they went.”
Unlike Chauhan, the family’s former neighbours refrained from passing pronouncements on her character, but speculated that her parents “probably knew” about her relationship with a Muslim boy.
One of the neighbours came up with a suggestion. “The Bajrang Dal people will know, you should ask them,” she said, passing on the address of the organisation, which is the militant youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate of the Sangh Parivar.
The good Hindu girl
Sachin Waghel, the Indore convener of the Bajrang Dal, is young, heavily-built and easily persuaded to talk about Asha’s case.
“He first saw her at the restaurant where she worked, and he gave her his number on a tissue paper,” said Waghel. The man reportedly called himself Ajay Singh Pawar. “Initially she refused him, but attraction sometimes happens to young people, and you know how girls get emotionally attached…”
Asha’s parents were completely in the dark about her relationship, Waghel claimed, and in October 2013, she finally eloped. “He first took her to Delhi and put her up with a family he knew, claiming he had to go to Meerut to convince his own family,” he said.
Asha grew suspicious, said Waghel, when she overheard this Delhi family discussing her with someone called Abdul on the phone. When she confronted him, he admitted he was Muslim but insisted he loved her.
“She got convinced, because Hindu girls believe that once you leave home with a man, jeena bhi us hi ke saath, marna bhi us hi ke saath” – you live and die with one person.
But it didn't take long for the love story to unravel and turn into a nightmare. If Waghel's narrative is to be believed, within the space of a year, Asha was enrolled in a madrasa in Meerut, then taken to the man's village where she was beaten and tortured, moved to a hospital in Jaipur where she underwent fertility treatment and also spent time in a psychiatric ward. The end of the ordeal came in January when Asha escaped and returned home bruised, broken and in shock.
Rape? ‘He must have done it’
The whole thing, alleged Waghel, is a racket run by the “Hazaraat”. “It’s a kind of Muslim organisation that pays Muslim men to flirt with Hindu girls and trap them – Rs 2.5 lakh per girl.”
Asha's case came to his attention when her brother came to meet him. “When he found out that the boy was not Brahmin but Muslim, he looked up the Bajrang Dal on social media and asked for our help,” said Waghel. “I met the girl once and I was the one who guided her with the police complaint.”
The complaint, I point out, included charges of sexual assault. “Well, he must have raped her!” he said. “She stayed with him for so long, he surely must have done it.”
Devil in the details
The superintendent of police of Indore West, Abid Khan, had a different narrative to offer.
“This case is complicated,” he said, echoing the claims of the police station supervisor that the woman was aware of her husband’s Muslim identity from the beginning. “When the girl ran away from her, her parents filed a missing person’s complaint in which they mentioned that she had been visiting dargahs,” he said.
Back at Annapurna police station, Chauhan confirmed Khan’s claim – in their missing person’s complaint in 2013, Asha’s parents had mentioned not just that she had started visiting Muslim shrines, but also that she had started praying in the name of Allah.
“Indore is seeing a lot of cases of inter-religious elopement," said the police superintendent, "but you can’t just call every such case ‘love jihad’.”
Another case
Less than six months ago, three hours from Indore, in the town of Jobat, a young Hindu woman had eloped with her Christian boyfriend. They married in an Arya Samaj temple in Bhopal but all hell broke loose in their hometown. The family filed a case of kidnapping against the man. Hindutva groups started street protests and threatened to launch an indefinite strike if the couple were not traced within a stipulated deadline. The couple surrendered, the marriage was annulled, and the man was asked to leave the town. But the woman stuck to her ground that she had chosen to elope and marry the man out of choice. She refused to go back to her family.
But not all women are able to withstand the social pressure that follows from making unconventional choices of partners outside their community. Sometimes the relationship itself cracks under the strain. When women return home from a broken marriage, often their families resort to false police cases against the man in the belief that it would help wash off the stains of the scandal.
Analysing 600 cases of rape tried in Delhi district courts in 2013, The Hindu found that "of the cases fully tried, over 40% dealt with consensual sex, usually involving the elopement of a young couple and the girl’s parents subsequently charging the boy with rape."
The missing voice
This is not to say that Asha's story followed the same script. It would be hard to know without speaking with her. But Asha could not be accessed for comment.
Chauhan, who slandered her, claimed he did not have her number.
Waghel, who had made her into a victim, said he could not put journalists in direct contact with her or her family because they wished to maintain a low profile.
If male chauvinism cannot accommodate the sexual freedom of a woman, religious bigotry has no compunction in distorting the narrative of consensual relationships to serve its agenda of social strife. Together, patriarchy and communalism might have once again altered the life of a young woman whose voice, at least for the moment, remains lost to us.
In the infamous Meerut case that propelled "love jihad" into the national headlines in August, the role of the Hindutva groups didn't come in full view until the case collapsed three months later. But in Indore, not only are Hindutva groups leading from the front, an activist of the Bajrang Dal has turned into the gatekeeper to the woman and her family.
The case as reported in the media
In October 2013, 22-year-old Asha (name changed) ran away from her home in Indore to elope with her boyfriend. Fifteen months later, she was back home and on February 5, she filed a police complaint against the man, who she had gone on to marry, accusing him of kidnapping, rape and forcing her to convert to Islam.
This week, the Indore police will send an investigation team to Meerut, the husband’s hometown. But there is a sense of hesitation at the Annapurna police station where the case has been filed.
“Since an FIR has been lodged, it is our duty to investigate,” said DS Chauhan, the police officer who heads the Annapurna police station. “But it seems to us that the young woman knew from the beginning that the man was Muslim.”
The woman who had affairs
The police was the first stop in our search for Asha’s story, and the police were not kind.
Chauhan, who is heading investigations into the case, had decided to slot the young woman into the “type that drinks and has affairs”, and claimed with confidence that her case did not hold much weight.
How did he know?
"We see so many cases every day, we can tell the character of a person at one glance – kaun randi hai, kaun peeta hai, kaun kya hai,” he said. We can tell who is a slut, who is a drunkard, or anything else.
Asha was working at a fast food chain in 2013, he claimed, when she met Abdul Rahman, a young man from Meerut who was in Indore for reasons that no one can quite recall. “Their affair went on for a few months, and her parents knew about it," Chauhan said. "They opposed it on religious grounds. That is why she ran away with him.”
When she left, her parents filed a missing person’s complaint, but several days later, they recorded another statement with the police claiming that they were now in touch with their daughter on the phone.
More than a year passed. Last month, on January 11, Asha returned home to Indore. Three weeks later, she showed up at the Annapurna police station, accompanied by a man who was “either her brother or her friend”.
She claimed that the man she eloped with had introduced himself as Ajay Singh Pawar, but he later turned out to be Abdul Rahman. He forced her into a nikah ceremony and compelled her to accept Islam. She also said she was beaten up and sexually assaulted.
The police have charged Rahman under eight sections of the Indian Penal Code, including cheating, kidnapping, sexual assault, wrongful confinement, and criminal intimidation.
An abandoned home
The address given for Asha in the police first information report is of a home in one of Indore’s densely populated middle class localities. But the place is now occupied by another family.
“They sold this house and moved out more than a year ago, after their daughter ran away and they became famous in this area,” said a neighbour. “None of us know where they went.”
Unlike Chauhan, the family’s former neighbours refrained from passing pronouncements on her character, but speculated that her parents “probably knew” about her relationship with a Muslim boy.
One of the neighbours came up with a suggestion. “The Bajrang Dal people will know, you should ask them,” she said, passing on the address of the organisation, which is the militant youth wing of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, an affiliate of the Sangh Parivar.
The good Hindu girl
Sachin Waghel, the Indore convener of the Bajrang Dal, is young, heavily-built and easily persuaded to talk about Asha’s case.
“He first saw her at the restaurant where she worked, and he gave her his number on a tissue paper,” said Waghel. The man reportedly called himself Ajay Singh Pawar. “Initially she refused him, but attraction sometimes happens to young people, and you know how girls get emotionally attached…”
Asha’s parents were completely in the dark about her relationship, Waghel claimed, and in October 2013, she finally eloped. “He first took her to Delhi and put her up with a family he knew, claiming he had to go to Meerut to convince his own family,” he said.
Asha grew suspicious, said Waghel, when she overheard this Delhi family discussing her with someone called Abdul on the phone. When she confronted him, he admitted he was Muslim but insisted he loved her.
“She got convinced, because Hindu girls believe that once you leave home with a man, jeena bhi us hi ke saath, marna bhi us hi ke saath” – you live and die with one person.
But it didn't take long for the love story to unravel and turn into a nightmare. If Waghel's narrative is to be believed, within the space of a year, Asha was enrolled in a madrasa in Meerut, then taken to the man's village where she was beaten and tortured, moved to a hospital in Jaipur where she underwent fertility treatment and also spent time in a psychiatric ward. The end of the ordeal came in January when Asha escaped and returned home bruised, broken and in shock.
Rape? ‘He must have done it’
The whole thing, alleged Waghel, is a racket run by the “Hazaraat”. “It’s a kind of Muslim organisation that pays Muslim men to flirt with Hindu girls and trap them – Rs 2.5 lakh per girl.”
Asha's case came to his attention when her brother came to meet him. “When he found out that the boy was not Brahmin but Muslim, he looked up the Bajrang Dal on social media and asked for our help,” said Waghel. “I met the girl once and I was the one who guided her with the police complaint.”
The complaint, I point out, included charges of sexual assault. “Well, he must have raped her!” he said. “She stayed with him for so long, he surely must have done it.”
Devil in the details
The superintendent of police of Indore West, Abid Khan, had a different narrative to offer.
“This case is complicated,” he said, echoing the claims of the police station supervisor that the woman was aware of her husband’s Muslim identity from the beginning. “When the girl ran away from her, her parents filed a missing person’s complaint in which they mentioned that she had been visiting dargahs,” he said.
Back at Annapurna police station, Chauhan confirmed Khan’s claim – in their missing person’s complaint in 2013, Asha’s parents had mentioned not just that she had started visiting Muslim shrines, but also that she had started praying in the name of Allah.
“Indore is seeing a lot of cases of inter-religious elopement," said the police superintendent, "but you can’t just call every such case ‘love jihad’.”
Another case
Less than six months ago, three hours from Indore, in the town of Jobat, a young Hindu woman had eloped with her Christian boyfriend. They married in an Arya Samaj temple in Bhopal but all hell broke loose in their hometown. The family filed a case of kidnapping against the man. Hindutva groups started street protests and threatened to launch an indefinite strike if the couple were not traced within a stipulated deadline. The couple surrendered, the marriage was annulled, and the man was asked to leave the town. But the woman stuck to her ground that she had chosen to elope and marry the man out of choice. She refused to go back to her family.
But not all women are able to withstand the social pressure that follows from making unconventional choices of partners outside their community. Sometimes the relationship itself cracks under the strain. When women return home from a broken marriage, often their families resort to false police cases against the man in the belief that it would help wash off the stains of the scandal.
Analysing 600 cases of rape tried in Delhi district courts in 2013, The Hindu found that "of the cases fully tried, over 40% dealt with consensual sex, usually involving the elopement of a young couple and the girl’s parents subsequently charging the boy with rape."
The missing voice
This is not to say that Asha's story followed the same script. It would be hard to know without speaking with her. But Asha could not be accessed for comment.
Chauhan, who slandered her, claimed he did not have her number.
Waghel, who had made her into a victim, said he could not put journalists in direct contact with her or her family because they wished to maintain a low profile.
If male chauvinism cannot accommodate the sexual freedom of a woman, religious bigotry has no compunction in distorting the narrative of consensual relationships to serve its agenda of social strife. Together, patriarchy and communalism might have once again altered the life of a young woman whose voice, at least for the moment, remains lost to us.
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