A division bench of Kerala High Court comprising justices V Chitambaresh and Sathish Ninan state that inter-religious weddings cannot be viewed as love jihad as it upheld a marriage between a Hindu woman and a Muslim man. The statement is made as the observations in the judgment on a habeas corpus petition filed by the man, a plea filed to ensure a person under arrest is brought before a court.
The bench also cited the Supreme Court order in the Lata Singh versus state of Uttar Pradesh case of 2004 to emphasize the need for encouraging inter-caste and inter-religious marriages. It said the present case was projected by the parents of the woman as love jihad whereas the man, who was in love with her and married her later, termed it as ghar-wapsi, a bid to coerce her to come back. The court also observed that any center for forcible conversion or re-conversion had to be busted by the police whether it was Hindu, Muslim or Christian lest it offends the Constitutional right.
The woman from Kannur had left her home on 16 May along with the Muslim youth. On a complaint from her parents, police had traced and detained them in Sonepat in Haryana a month later. Initially, a lower court had allowed the woman to go with her parents, who then lodged her in a yoga center at Tripunithura in Ernakulam district allegedly to make her give up the relationship with the Muslim man.
When the woman was produced before the high court on August 18, she had interacted with a single judge and expressed her desire to go back with parents, four days after the incident she made the statement expressing her wish to go with her parents was under pressure. She also alleged that she was tortured at the yoga center and coerce to convert back into Hinduism.
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