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According to the prosecution's case, the man and woman had been in a relationship since March 2018. A relationship cannot be called a form of 'love jihad' just because the boy and the girl belong to different religions, the Aurangabad Division of the Bombay High Court has said in granting pre-arrest bail for a Muslim woman and her family. . A divisional court consisting of Justices Vibha Kankanwadi and Justice Abhay Waghwase in the February 26 order granted early bail to defendants who were denied redress by a local court in Aurangabad.
The woman's former lover alleged that she and her family forced him to convert to Islam and undergo circumcision.
L'avocat de l'homme, tout en s'opposant aux demands de libération sous caution préalables à l'arrestation de la femme et des membres de sa famille, a également soutenu qu'il s'agissait d'un cas de "djihad in love".
“Love jihad” is a term used by right-wing Hindu organizations to claim, without evidence, that there is a widespread conspiracy to lure Hindu women into converting them to Islam through marriage.
Here, however, the accuser was a man.
The high court rejected the love jihad argument, noting that the man, in the first information report (FIR), admitted that he was in a relationship with the woman and did not end the relationship despite several opportunities.
“Just because the boy and the girl are of different religions, it can't have a religious angle. It may be a case of pure mutual love," the court said.
"It seems that now there has been an attempt to give the color of love to jihad, but when love is accepted, there is less chance that the person will get trapped simply by converting to the other's religion," he added.
According to the prosecution's case, the man and woman had been in a relationship since March 2018. The man belonged to a registered caste community, but did not disclose this to the woman.
Later, the woman began to insist that he convert to Islam and marry her, after which the man revealed his caste identity to his parents. They did not oppose their caste identity and convinced their daughter to accept it.
But then relations soured, after which the man filed a complaint against the woman and her family in December 2022.
The HC, while granting the woman and her family pre-arrest bail, said the investigation into the case was almost complete and therefore her detention would not be necessary.
