This is the first article in a series of reports on people who won their legal battles after being falsely charged under the anti-conversion laws brought in by BJP governments in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand.
New Delhi: June 25, 2023 began as any other Sunday morning for 35-year-old Sonu Saroj. His family members, distant relatives and people from neighbouring villages had congregated in an open space near a brick shed he had built behind his house in Kodra village, Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh to participate in a prayer meeting dedicated to Jesus Christ. A vehicle mechanic from the Dalit community, Saroj was known to host prayer meetings in a makeshift ramshackle prayer centre – Jeevan Dwar Prarthna Bhavan – which he had registered in the form of a society. But as the day went on, things were far from normal.
The event was scheduled to start at 11 am; around 250 voluntary participants, many of them women, had already gathered near Saroj’s shed half an hour before that. Others were still trickling in when a mob of 10-15 Hindutva men linked to the extremist group Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) and its youth wing Bajrang Dal barged into Saroj’s premises and created a ruckus. “They were charged and carrying lathis and dandas (batons). They did not offer any warning, they just started hitting us all,” says Saroj.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty.
His nephew was assaulted by three men. And when Saroj’s wife Prabha (name changed), who was bathing at that time, rushed out to intervene, the miscreants, some of whom wore saffron scarves, allegedly manhandled her. One of them struck her head hard with a lathi, causing her serious injury. The mob accused Saroj of holding unauthorised prayer meetings in a bid to convert local Hindus to Christianity.
After a few minutes, police arrived and took her to a hospital, where she received treatment. Instead of taking action against the aggressors, the police used Section 151 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and sent Saroj to jail. The section gives the police the power to arrest a person without a warrant or a magistrate’s order if they believe he or she is planning to commit a cognisable crime. Later in the day, an FIR was lodged against Saroj at the Salon police station under Sections 3 and 5 (1) of the stringent anti-conversion law conceived by the Yogi Adityanath government in 2020 in the form of an ordinance, The Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021. The case was registered on the complaint of Sanjay Kumar Tiwari, a member of the VHP. The FIR accused Saroj of conducting “changai sabhas” or special healing meetings to unlawfully convert poor Hindus to Christianity using allurement and deception.
A law to harass
Saroj is among at least 2,700 people who have been implicated in over 835 criminal cases under the anti-conversion law in the state (according to official figures till July 31, 2024) since November 2020. The law was brought in to give legal heft to the Sangh parivar’s agenda of criminalising romantic relationships and marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men, and targeting Muslim men and their families. Deviously referred to as ‘love jihad’ by the saffron party and parts of the mainstream media, the conspiracy theory remains legally undefined and unrecognised. However, the law has also been systematically and rampantly used against those people considered Hindus, especially those from the Dalit, tribal and backward caste communities, on the allegation that they are converting poor, marginalised Hindus to Christianity. Rights activists, the political opposition and lawyers have accused the government of lodging false cases under the law to harass those who deviate from its philosophy of Brahmanical Hindutva.
Also read: No Country for Religious Converts
Saroj, who was born into the Pasi sub-caste of Dalits, believes that his caste identity was a major factor behind his ordeal. The Pasis, the second largest Scheduled Caste community in the state, have a long historical legacy and cultural claim in the areas of Awadh adjoining Lucknow. Salon, Saroj’s hometown in Rae Bareli, is located around 110 km south-east of Lucknow.
Since the law came into force, only a handful of cases and trials have reached a legal conclusion. According to a report in The Times of India, from November 2020 to July 31, 2024, police registered more than 835 FIRs and arrested 1,682 people on charges of unlawful conversion. Only four of these cases, the report notes, have seen a conviction so far. On the other hand, the acquittals had been unreported until The Wire in August 2024 broke the story of how a court in Bareilly not only acquitted two Hindu men of unlawful conversion charges but also ordered legal action against police officers for falsely implicating them on the basis of a baseless complaint by a self-styled Hindutva cow vigilante.
Saroj’s story is among those rare cases where courts have concluded the legal proceedings following allegations of unlawful conviction. Almost 15 months after he was booked, Saroj was discharged from the case in September 2024 after a local court decided that there were not sufficient grounds to proceed against him. This is an account of how the prosecution’s case built on flimsy allegations fell apart even before it reached the stage of trial.
Saroj says his wife Prabha is still suffering the repercussions of the blow to her head. She is unable to work like she used to and struggles to take care of the house and their four children. The couple has two daughters, aged 13 and nine, and two sons, 16 and seven. “My wife’s head had cracked open. The real problems started three to four months after the attack and I even had to admit her to the AIIMS hospital in Rae Bareli for a week. She continues to face problems – her eyesight has worsened and on occasion, she loses consciousness for long durations. She’s not the same person,” says Saroj, despairingly.
Prabha after she was attacked. Photo: Special arrangement
The cost of fighting caste oppression
Though Saroj is a Hindu Dalit on paper, for the last ten years he has grown to be increasingly influenced by the philosophy and teachings of Jesus Christ. He watched videos about Christ on Youtube, and even started attending Christian prayer meetings. Initially, Saroj was drawn towards Christ by like-minded people in Prayagraj. But travelling there for regular meetings and prayer events was cumbersome as well as expensive. So, one day, he decided to conduct the prayer meetings in his own house with his family. He was pleasantly surprised by the turnout and decided to continue hosting the meetings regularly. As the gatherings got larger, he built a small shed for them. While Saroj continues to maintain a Hindu identity, not formally converting to Christianity, he has developed faith in the healing powers of Jesus. He believes that his exposure to Jesus Christ brought a positive change in his life and helped rid many of his vices, such as liquor abuse.
“I remember the police would pass by but they did not trouble us,” he says. “To be honest, I did have my inhibitions initially. I thought this would also turn out to be like the other religions, which only prescribe remedies and rituals. They are obsessed with exorcism. But the message of Jesus was something totally different.”
The FIR against him was based on vague allegations. In his police complaint, Tiwari did not mention any particular incident of unlawful conversion or name a victim. Tiwari alleged that for the last five years, Saroj had been organising “changai sabhas” in Kodra on Tuesdays and Sundays without prior permission from the authorities. Through these gatherings, Tiwari alleged, Saroj was “misleading and confusing” people of the Hindu religion to get them to adopt Christianity.
Saroj believes that the right-wing activists targeted him to punish him for embracing the teachings of Jesus and to dissuade others from attending such prayers. “I had no enmity or conflict with anyone. But I guess it was also due to my caste. Some people would get jealous, thinking how come so many people, with their cars parked in the neighbourhood, were drawn to my prayer meetings,” he says.
Embedded in Saroj’s newfound yet complicated attachment to Christian philosophy is also the historical and ongoing resistance of Dalits against caste oppression and a search for dignity. Though he acknowledges that he did not have prior permission from the authorities to hold the meetings, he denies the allegation of religious conversion and distinguishes having ‘faith’ in Jesus from a formal conversion to Christianity.
“When lower caste people start going to churches, they start to develop and get educated. They also want to educate their children and most importantly, learn to fight for their rights,” says Saroj. But the feudal and casteist elements in society, he adds, cannot tolerate this. “They want us to remain illiterate and ignorant. They prefer that we work in their fields instead of studying in schools.”
A personal grudge also seems to have motivated the FIR, he claims. While seeking bail in the case, Saroj had told a local court that on June 15, 2023 – ten days before the incident – Tiwari had come to Saroj’s rented garage to get his motorcycle fixed. For the service, Tiwari was supposed to pay Saroj Rs 600. But when Saroj asked for it, Tiwari reacted angrily and allegedly boasted about his Bajrang Dal background. “‘How dare you demand money from me, you bloody P…… (casteist slur)’,” Saroj said in his bail application, repeating what Tiwari allegedly told him. As a result of this confrontation, Saroj says, Tiwari lodged a false case against him.
Police breaking the rules of UP’s anti-conversion law
Saroj filed a discharge application under Section 227 of the CrPC, which provides a judge the power to discharge an accused if upon consideration of all the material available, the court feels there is no sufficient ground for criminal proceedings. On September 21, 2024 after a detailed discussion on the merits of the case, additional sessions judge Rae Bareli Amit Kumar Pandey admitted Saroj’s discharge application. The judge ruled that there was no basis whatsoever for action against Saroj under the charge of unlawful conversion.
Hindutva right-wing men threatening villagers. Photo: Special arrangement
The case against Saroj contravened some essential sections of UP’s anti-conversion law. Section 3 of the law prohibits the conversion from one religion to another by use or practice of misrepresentation, force, fraud, undue influence, coercion or allurement. Section 5 (1) prescribes the punishment for the above offence: a minimum jail term of one year but may extend to five years. In case the alleged victim is a woman, a minor, a Dalit or a tribal, the minimum punishment would be two years in jail, which could extend up to 10 years with a fine of Rs 25,000. Section 2 (1) of the law defines who is authorised to carry out a conversion legally. A “religion converter” means a person of any religion who performs any act of conversion from one religion to another religion and by whatever name he is called such as Father, Karmkandi, Maulvi or Mulla, etc., says the law. Saroj argued that he was not a “religious converter” and hence had no authority to convert people from one religion to another.
Most importantly, the FIR was also in conflict with Section 4 of the 2021 Act, which defines who is authorised to file a complaint against unlawful conversion. Section 4 of the law says that “any aggrieved person, his or her parents, brother, sister or any other person related to him or her by blood, marriage or adoption” would be considered competent to lodge an FIR.
However, despite several reminders by the Allahabad high court, police in UP are brazenly allowing third parties, especially extremist Hindutva elements, Bharatiya Janata Party members, local elected representatives and police officers themselves to lodge complaints even when they are in no way aggrieved or the possible victims of forced or deceptive conversions. To tackle this legal problem, the Adityanath government in July 2024 amended Section 4 of the law to widen its scope and allow “any person” to lodge a complaint against an unlawful conversion even if they were not the aggrieved or a relative of the aggrieved.
FIR against Saroj an ‘unlawful document’
In Saroj’s case, there was no specific victim of unlawful conversion, nor was the FIR lodged by any aggrieved person. During the investigation, the police said they recovered a copy of the Old Testament Bible, a copy of the Believers Bible Commentary New Testament (Part 1), a diary, a register and nine envelopes from Saroj. The diary, Saroj said, documented the names and phone numbers of people who were regulars at his prayer meetings.
The prosecution produced before the court more than half-a-dozen witnesses – Meva Lal Bharti, Vinod Maurya, Suresh Singh, Kulai, Dwija, Sita Patel, Suraj Pal Kaushal. Many of them, if not all, were affiliated to the Bajrang Dal. In one voice, they testified that Saroj had been holding “changai sabhas” where he “spoke highly” of the Christian faith and Christ, and spoke critically of Hindu deities and goddesses.
Watch: ‘When Governments Get Into Matters Like Love and Faith, It Ends Badly’
The judge did not give any credence to these statements, and pointed out that the investigating officer had failed to record the statement of a single person who was either aggrieved or had been deceived into converting. In his order, Judge Pandey pointed out that none of the witnesses produced by the prosecution spoke about unlawful conversion. They only recorded that Saroj gathered people in his house and lauded Christianity, he said.
Judge Pandey concluded that the FIR filed against Saroj was an “unlawful document”. Tiwari had no right to file a complaint in the matter and the police had no right to register the FIR against Saroj, said the judge. Tiwari was not an aggrieved person nor related to any alleged victim.
Scene at the prayer meeting after the ruckus. Photo: Special arrangement
The judge also observed that the FIR did not specify which person or community was being converted. There were no witnesses that Saroj had converted or attempted to convert any person from one religion to another through misrepresentation, allurement, force, undue influence or pressure, noted Judge Pandey. The judge also underlined that recovering religious books such as The Bible from someone’s house did not automatically make them guilty under the Act of 2021.
The anti-conversion case was only one part of Saroj’s battle. After he and his family were assaulted by the right-wing activists, he struggled to get an FIR registered against them, running from pillar to post. Eventually, he had to approach a local court seeking the registration of a criminal case and in February 2024, an FIR was lodged against seven persons and 10 unidentified others. Among the accused were Bajrang Dal district convenor Suresh Singh and his alleged associates Pappu Kaushal, Ram Sajeevan, Satish Joshi, Aman Singh, Shiva and Dheeraj Kaushal. They were booked for attempt to murder, assault and disturbing religious assemblies, among other offences. Though he has been cleared of false charges of unlawful conversion, Saroj is not too hopeful for justice in this case.
The Wire spoke to Tiwari but he surprisingly, against all documentary evidence, insisted that it was Suresh Singh, and not him, who had filed the complaint against Saroj. He had no further comments and distanced himself from the matter. He asked The Wire to contact Singh, who could not be reached.
