The Allahabad High Court has raised serious concerns over the filing of “false, fake, and frivolous FIRs” under the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021 and stated that it has observed a “troubling pattern of misuse” of the law by the police and third-party complainants.
The observations were made by the Division Bench comprising Justice Abdul Moin and Justice Pramod Kumar Srivastava on April 13 while hearing a petition filed by a Muslim man against whom an FIR was lodged by invoking provisions of the anti-conversion law.
The Bahraich police had filed the case against him based on the complaint of an 18-year-old woman’s father. He was booked under Sections 87, 69, and 351(3) of the BNS, 2023, and Sections 3 & 5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.
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However, in her statement to the police, recorded under Section 183 of the BNS, the woman contradicted the allegations levelled in the FIR. She claimed that she had been in a consensual relationship with the petitioner for three years. She denied any coercion to convert or marry and expressed a desire to live with him and voiced apprehension of harassment by certain groups.
