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On the night of December 14, 2020, Mohammad Saqib’s life was upended.
He had stepped out of his friend’s home in Nasirpur village in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district after a birthday party. Outside, he saw a girl on a bicycle surrounded by a few men. When he walked up to the group to find out what was going on, the men attacked him.
Saqib, a 16-year-old daily wager, did not return home in Kirar Kheri village that night. The next morning, his parents learnt that he had been arrested.
The girl was also 16 and a Dalit. On December 15, her father lodged a first information report against Saqib at the Dhampur police station.
Saqib was 16 too. He was accused of kidnapping and “compelling” the minor “for marriage”. He was also booked under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, 2020, better known as the state’s “love jihad” law.
“Love jihad” is a conspiracy theory that accuses Muslim men of being part of an organised plot to trick unsuspecting Hindu women into romantic relationships to ultimately convert them to Islam.
Saqib was one of the first men to be booked under the law, 18 days after it was brought in as an ordinance by the Adityanath government.
Five years later, on May 21, a special court in Bijnor acquitted Mohammad Saqib, now 21, of all charges.
“This is the first case where a Muslim man in UP has been acquitted of charges under the anti-conversion law after a trial,” said Bijnor-based advocate Mashruf Kamaal, Saqib’s counsel.
In other cases, the Uttar Pradesh police has dropped charges against individuals after preliminary investigations, or they have been quashed by the courts.
At least three cases that have ended in acquittals in Amroha, Bareilly and Azamgarh districts had tried mostly Dalit men for illegally converting others to Christianity.
Saqib’s case went through 74 hearings over five years. During the trial, the court found contradictions in the state’s case and said that it could not prove its charges beyond reasonable doubt. “The prosecution has failed to establish the basic facts,” said additional district and sessions judge Kalpana Pandey’s judgement.
The case
The FIR against Saqib made serious claims. It invoked sections of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act involving sexual assault and accused him of luring a minor for illicit intercourse under the SC and ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
The complaint alleged that Saqib regularly spoke to the Dalit girl while pretending that he was a Hindu man named Sonu.
Around 11 pm on December 14, 2020, he lured and abducted the girl from her house in Berkhara Chauhan village with the intention of marrying and converting her, it alleged. When she found out that he was Muslim, she escaped and returned home and narrated the ordeal to her parents.
All offences in the complaint were non-bailable. On December 17, Saqib was sent to judicial custody.
He spent six months in prison before the Allahabad High Court granted him bail on June 15, 2021.
In submissions before the sessions court, Saqib said that he was innocent and had been falsely implicated because of a local dispute.
The young man told Scroll that he worked as an understudy to a welder in Dehradun, Uttarakhand, and had returned to his home in Bijnor days before the incident. He added that he did not know the girl and had never met or spoken to her before the night of December 14.
Days after the FIR, the minor’s father, the complainant in the FIR, told the Indian Express that the matter had been “politicised” by the village pradhan, against whom he was going to contest in the panchayat polls in April 2021.
“This is all politics. They made videos of my daughter and falsely claimed that this was a case of love jihad,” he was quoted as saying, adding that his FIR was dictated by police officials.
Poking holes
Arif, Saqib’s elder brother, told Scroll that the girl’s village, Berkhara Chauhan, is a few hundred metres from his family village of Kirar Kheri. Saqib is the youngest of three brothers. “Our father passed away in 2016,” Arif said. “When Saqib was young, we sent him to school for a few months. But he could not adjust, so we took him out and put him to work.”
During the trial, the minor’s cross-examination by the defence counsel poked several holes in the FIR complaint.
Three aspects of the prosecution’s case were called into question: the location of the incident, the account of the complainant, and the claims of religious conversion.
In her statement before the magistrate under section 164 of the Criminal Procedure Code, the girl had said that Saqib had lured her to a village called Nasirpur. When she asked his name, he said Saqib and revealed that he was Muslim. Then he tried to molest her. The girl added that she pushed him away and started running. She raised an alarm which led the residents of Nasirpur to catch Saqib.
The court noted that according to the statement of her father, a witness, his wife had told him that their daughter had gone missing from their home after she went to the washroom on the night of December 14. The girl returned shortly after and recounted her ordeal to her parents, he said.
However, the girl’s mother, also a witness in the case, had a different version. She told the court that her daughter had gone missing after going to the washroom that night, but she only returned the next morning to recount her ordeal. Moreover, in her cross-examination, the mother said that her daughter had not told her anything about the incident that night.
The girl’s cross-examination gave yet another account. She said that she had gone to the washroom at her friend’s house when Saqib took her to Nasirpur.
The girl’s statement was inconsistent in other aspects, the court noted. During her medical examination, she claimed that she had been abducted on the night of December 13 by three men while using the washroom in her home.
The men threw her into a van and brought her to Nasirpur, she had said. They forced themselves on her but could not sexually assault her. She eventually escaped after locals intervened.
The second problem in the prosecution’s case was the father’s account. In his court statement, he had alleged that on December 14, when the girl did not return home, he searched for her until she came back herself later that night.
But during his cross-examination, the father said that he did not search for the girl after she went missing. He was instead informed about her whereabouts by a police official at the Nehtaur police station over a phone call. He added that the police handed over the minor to him the next morning.
Third, and most importantly, the claim of conversion also fell apart during the cross-examination. The girl told the court that Saqib had not asked her to convert to Islam. She added that, contrary to her father’s claim in court, she was not present in the police station when he had written out the FIR.
Judge Pandey observed that these contradictions in the statements of the victim and her parents “did not provide much benefit to the prosecution as they are contrary to the prosecution’s story”.
‘Doubtful evidence’
The court found glaring weaknesses in the statements of circle officer Ajay Kumar Agarwal, who was the investigating officer in the case.
For one, during his cross-examination, Agarwal could not recall where Saqib had allegedly taken the girl after kidnapping her, and where he had allegedly proceeded to molest her.
This was a problem because he had drawn the map of the alleged scene of crime himself.
“He does not remember in which direction of the village is the site of the incident,” said the court. “How many rooms were there in the location where he made the map? He does not remember. He does not remember what was east of the incident site. He said that the map only shows where the victim went; not where the incident took place…this makes the evidence doubtful.”
The court also examined the doctor who conducted a medical examination of the minor on December 16. The doctor told the court that she found “no external injuries on the victim’s body”. She had also examined whether the minor was sexually assaulted, despite her claim that she was not.
But Agarwal did not demand a supplementary report on sexual assault from the doctor. “We prepare the supplementary report only when the investigating officer asks for it,” added the doctor.
Taking these inconsistencies into account, judge Pandey ruled that the prosecution “has failed to establish basic facts” since the statements of the victim, her father, her mother and the investigating officer are “full of contradictions and hence not reliable”.
“The prosecution has failed to prove the case beyond reasonable doubt,” the judge said.
The special court acquitted Saqib of all charges.
‘Most cases result in acquittals’
The UP anti-conversion became a law on March 5, 2021, and was amended with harsher punishments on August 6, 2024.
Between November 2020 and July 2024, the UP police registered 835 cases under the law, with 1,682 arrests.
However, lawyers said that convictions under the law have been few.
Advocate Ramesh Kumar, who represented Saqib during his bail hearing in Allahabad High Court, told Scroll that it is difficult to prove charges under Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law during a trial because it is a bad law to begin with
“Mostly, these cases are applied under pressure from Hindu right-wing groups, who force a woman and their family to give false statements,” he said. “But as the pressure eases with time and the trial goes on, the same people contradict their older statements in courts.”
Kumar added that the hardest part is to prove a malafide intent of the person accused of illegal conversion. “This is why most cases under this law result in acquittals,” he said. “Mostly, there is no intent. Cases are filed because of the ruling party and its cadre’s attempt to magnify anti-Muslim prejudices for political gain.”
In July 2024, while acquitting two two men charged with sections of the anti-conversion law, a court in Bareilly directed “appropriate legal action” against police officials for lodging the case “under some pressure” and on the basis of a “baseless, unfounded, fabricated and fantastical” story.
In March 2024, the Supreme Court had remarked that parts of Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law may seem violative of Article 25 of the Constitution, which protects freedom of conscience and the free profession, practice, and propagation of religion.
‘The case ruined us’
Soon after he was granted bail in 2021, Saqib returned to Dehradun and resumed his welding job. “I used to make Rs 7,000 a month when I got the job and today I make Rs 10,000,” he said. “Most of that money was spent in fighting the case. Sometimes, I had to travel to Bijnor four times a month for hearings. I have not been able to save any money.”
His brother, Arif, added that he and other family members had to pitch in when Saqib ran out of money. “Hum toh bekaar ho gaye is case ki wajah se,” he said. The case ruined us.
While the acquittal came as a relief to him, the trial has taken a toll. “The case happened when I was 16. That is the age when others play and have fun,” said Saqib. “The case is like a stain on me and my family. In Bijnor, some still believe that I did it.”
Arif added that people in his village still look down on the family because of the trial. “None of our ancestors ever went near a police station,” he said. “But this [case] changed everything.”
This article first appeared on Scroll.in
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