New Delhi: The Adityanath-led Bharatiya Janata Party government in Uttar Pradesh has strongly defended the right of its police to lodge cases under the state’s controversial anti-conversion law even when the law, on a plain reading of it, only allows victims of illegal conversion or their close relatives to file such complaints.
According to an affidavit submitted by the state government in the Allahabad high court on September 10 in an ongoing legal case – a copy of which is with The Wire – the BJP government has argued that its police officers do indeed qualify as “aggrieved” persons in cases of unlawful conversion.
The government has justified the rampant lodging of suo motu FIRs by the police against unlawful conversion by arguing that it was in the interest of law and order and that the powers granted to a police officer under the erstwhile Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) were not controlled by the section of the UP unlawful conversion law dealing with competency in getting FIRs lodged.
The Durga Yadav case
Can the police lodge FIRs against unlawful conversion on their own without any complainant? Can the police be an “aggrieved person” under the state’s anti-conversion law?
These questions have come up after a pastor from Jaunpur, Durga Yadav, who was booked last year under the anti-conversion law for trying to allegedly convert poor Hindus to Christianity, challenged the legality of the FIR, saying that the police had no legal authority to lodge the complaint against him.
In the FIR, the police accused Yadav of running a prayer service to illegally convert “gullible” people to Christianity. The complainant in the case, however, was not any of those people who were allegedly unlawfully converted through allurements or coercion or misrepresentation, but the station house officer of Kerakat police station in Jaunpur, Ram Janam Yadav.
The Durga Yadav case, which is ongoing in the HC, has given rise to the larger question of whether the police or any-other third party entity are legally authorised to be the complainant in a matter involving allegations of unlawful conversion. At this juncture, it is important to note that the state government recently amended the existing anti-conversion law and made it more stringent. Among the amendments made by the government was to alter Section 4 of The UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.
Earlier, Section 4 of the Act said 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 under the law.
The logic for this was clear: for anyone to be made to answer to the charge of illegal conversion, i.e. a conversion made on the basis of allurement or coercion, there has to be a victim who says he was converted on this basis.
However, under the newly-amended law, notified on August 6, 2024 – the UP Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion (Amendment) Act, 2024 – ”any person” would be authorised to lodge a complaint against unlawful conversion. The question raised in the Durga Yadav writ petition case would still remain valid to the FIRs lodged prior to the notification in August 2024, before the law was amended.
Yadav filed a writ petition in the HC submitting that the FIR lodged against him under Section 3 and 5(1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021, was illegal as a police officer was not authorised to file such a case under the law. He argued that Section 4 of the 2021 Act barred this.
Also read: Uttar Pradesh: In Anti-Conversion FIRs, Who Are the ‘Others’ Who Mostly File the Complaints?
Door opens for vigilantism
Upon a plain reading of Section 4 of the 2021 Act, a victim or their relative can be the complainant. And on more than one occasion, various benches of the Allahabad High Court have clarified this point in individual petitions. However, as reported by The Wire on July 18, the inconsistent manner in which different benches of the HC have interpreted this crucial Section has not only opened the doors for vigilantism but also given the police immense powers to take suo motu action even if nobody alleged to have been unlawfully converted files a complaint. As a result, the police continue to register FIRs citing unlawful conversion on the complaint of third-party elements, in most cases Hindutva activists, elected local representatives or police officers themselves.
The FIR in Durga Yadav’s case was lodged against six persons – Durga Yadav himself, another pastor Shravan Kumar, Shravan’s wife Usha Devi, and Shravan’s brothers Jitendra Kumar and Govind Lal, and Surendra Gautam – at Kerakat police station on September 12, 2023.
The complainant in the case was SHO Ram Janam Yadav. According to the allegations levelled in the FIR, Durga Yadav and others were found converting “bholi bhali junta (gullible people)” through monetary allurements and promise of healing. The police raided a prayer centre linked to Yadav and claimed to have recovered material allegedly being used for illegal religious conversion.
This material – now considered “evidence” of a crime – includes nine bibles, one small bible, a diary prescribing cure for various ailments and feedback of those who were cured, around 100 white-coloured posters of Jesus Christ, 138 satsang prayer pamphlets in pink colour, 293 pamphlets about ‘birth, life and death’, 36 pamphlets about the ‘five steps to faith’, 14 pamphlets on ‘how to discover god’, a drum, a harmonium, 32 white envelopes, 24 envelopes with names, two microphone stands, one selfie stand, a speech stand made of steel, a microphone and a camcorder.
Durga Yadav approached the HC against the FIR, pleading that the SHO was not the “aggrieved person” as defined in section 4 of the law. In July, the HC asked the government to clarify who exactly was competent to register an FIR under the law.
Illustration: The Wire, with Canva.
‘Numerous cases’
On July 30, 2024, Justice Vinod Diwakar directed the additional secretary, home department, UP to file an affidavit about the government’s stand in this matter.
The judge also made an important observation about a larger trend in the state. “Needless to say, numerous cases of similar nature are pending before this Court challenging the validity and correctness of proceedings initiated by the police at their own behest,” noted Justice Diwakar.
The court also stayed the trial court proceedings in the case against Yadav and others. On July 12, the HC took on record the affidavit filed by the state government and extended the relief granted to the accused in the criminal case against them.
In its response to the HC, the Adityanath government has defended the right of the police to lodge FIRs against unlawful conversion, saying that Section 4 of the 2021 Act was not exhaustive. An “aggrieved person” under Section 4 of the law includes the SHO of the concerned area because the SHO is the “competent and responsible authority to maintain law and is duty bound to ensure peace” in the area, the state government said in an affidavit.
The affidavit was filed on behalf of the government by a senior official Deepak Kumar, posted as the additional chief secretary, home department. Kumar said that in cases of unlawful conversion, the situation of law and order “become critical”, making the police SHO a competent authority.
Also read: UP Court Orders Action Against Cops Who Framed Duo For ‘Converting People Into Christianity’
In the 18-page affidavit, the government argued that the phrase “any aggrieved person” was “an expression of wide import” and ought to cover any “informant” who possesses information with regard to commission of any cognizable offence and gives such information to the police officer under CrPC section 154(1).
“The object and purpose of the Act would stand defeated if section 4 of the Act is treated to be exhaustive and not given harmonious construction considering the context of the Act and Section 154(1) CrPC,” the government said.
The government further said that the Act was not a “consolidating statute” and therefore the procedure provided by the CrPC would continue to operate. Section 4 of the anti-conversion law only supplements and complements the CrPC, it added.
The powers granted to a police officer under Section 156 of CrPC to receive “every information related to the commission of cognizable offence” from the “informant” and register an FIR and investigate it, were not controlled by section 4 of the UP anti-conversion law, the government further argued.
‘Orphans’
In the affidavit, the UP government also said that the enactment of Section 4 “cannot be unreasonably strained to restrict the scope of any person aggrieved to the victim only.”
“Such a construction would result in reducing section 4 of the ‘Act to absurdity’; and revive the mischief of mass conversions (aside of unlawful conversions of individuals) that the Act aims to check,” said Kumar.
The state government also countered Durga Yadav’s contention, saying that if his interpretation of Section 4 was accepted, it would mean that ‘in cases of mass conversions or cases or orphans, or those without parents and relatives, no FIR can be registered unless the victim, or his family or friend appears” to lodge an FIR.
This would “give rise to an anomalous situation where even though the informant has given the information regarding commission of cognizable offence under the Act, yet the police will not be able to proceed with registration of the FIR under section 154(1) CrPC and consequently investigate the commission of the cognizable offences till the victim or his family or friend lodges the FIR,” the government said.
“This is clearly not the intention of the Legislature behind the enactment of the Act, as also, section 4. Such an absurd construction of section 4 of the Act would bring about a totally unwarranted situation of repugnancy between section 4 of the Act and section 154 and 156 of CrPC, even though section 7 of the Act expressly overrides CrPC only to the extent of providing that all offences under this act are cognizable; non-bailable and triable by the Court of Sessions,” the government document said.
In its affidavit, the government also mentioned that it has now amended section 4 of the law.
Now, with the amendments, “any person” can provide information regarding the violation of the provisions of the law in accordance with chapter 13 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS), 2023. The chapter deals with the information to the police and their powers to investigate.
Also read: UP Makes Anti-Conversion Law More Stringent: Life Term in Jail and ‘Anyone’ Can Lodge FIR
Acknowledgment of ‘difficulties’
What is notable is that in the “Statement of Objects and Reasons” attached with the draft of the amended law, the Adityanath government acknowledged it was necessary to amend Section 4 to “resolve certain difficulties” that have arisen in the past in various cases regarding the “interpretation” of Section 4.
The said section of the Act has been a matter of contention in several cases, with accused-after-accused questioning the validity of the FIRs lodged by the police on their own behalf. Section 4 of the Act came under the scanner recently when a court in Bareilly on July 30 – while acquitting two Hindu men of unlawful conversion charges – ordered legal action against a bunch of police officers in the district for falsely implicating the duo on the basis of a baseless complaint by a self-styled Hindutva cow activist. The primary reason for the acquittal was that the court held the FIR lodged against the accused persons as illegal as the complainant was not a victim of alleged unlawful conversion.
In another case, a court in Lucknow on September 11 sentenced 12 persons to life , including a prominent Islamic scholar from west UP, and awarded a 10 year jail term to four others after finding them guilty of running an inter-state syndicate for unlawfully converting Hindus to Islam. One of the grounds on which the accused persons had challenged the allegations was that the FIR was not lodged by an aggrieved person but by a police officer of the Anti-Terrorist Squad.
The Wire reached out to Durga Yadav for his comments on the IUP government affidavit but he was unavailable. A relative of his spoke on the condition of anonymity and criticised the police for lodging the FIR even though “no common citizen who was allegedly being illegally converted to Christianity had complained to the police.”
“We never offer any allurements to anyone or invite them to our prayer meetings. They come to the meetings of their own will. The allegations against Durga Yadav are baseless. No person who attended the prayer meetings made any such allegation,” said the relative.
The relative also said that the entire prayer service conducted by Durga Yadav was recorded on camera and telecast online on a YouTube channel.
The Allahabad High Court is scheduled to take up the matter on September 19.
