The Moradabad district administration in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday denied reports claiming that a 22-year-old Hindu woman, who was kept in a protection home under the new unlawful conversion ordinance, has suffered miscarriage, The Indian Express reported. The woman’s husband, a Muslim man, and his brother were arrested last week in Kanth area, while he was in the process of registering their marriage.
Moradabad District Probation Officer Rajesh Chandra Gupta said “fake news” of the woman being forced into a miscarriage was being circulated on social media. The woman identified as Pinki is three months pregnant. Her mother-in-law alleged that a injection was administered to her to abort the baby, according to British newspaper The Telegraph.
Officials denied the charges and said that Pinki was admitted to the woman’s district hospital on December 11 after she complained of stomach ache and was discharged on December 13. “After getting discharged she again complained of stomach pain so we readmitted her, but she is fine,” Gupta said.
Child Protection Commission chairperson Vishesh Gupta also denied all reports of the woman having a miscarriage, India Today reported. “We instructed the director of DPO [District Probation Officer], Moradabad to get the woman medically tested to know if she has been forced into abortion,” he added. “The medical report clearly says that she is three-months pregnant. We have evidence.”
It has been over a week since Pinki was moved to a government-run women protection home in Moradabad, but the police are yet to record her statement before a magistrate. Additional Superintendent of Police (Moradabad) Vidya Sagar Mishra said that they failed to record her statement due to a “busy schedule”.
The woman cannot go home till a magistrate decides on her case under the new anti-conversion law, that targets “love jihad”, a pejorative term coined by the right-wing groups to push the conspiracy theory that Muslim men charm Hindu women into marrying them with the sole purpose of converting their brides to Islam.
Her husband, Rashid Ali, and his brother were arrested by the police under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020 on December 5, allegedly based on a complaint lodged by Pinki’s mother. Members of the right-wing group Bajrang Dal, who reached the marriage registration office and accosted the couple, handed them over to the police.
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