UP woman goes missing, cops lodge case against man under anti-conversion law

Police have lodged a case against a Karnataka man for allegedly kidnapping a 19-year-old woman after befriending her, hiding his religious identity, police said on Thursday.

A missing report was lodged by the woman's father on January 5 after she did not return home from college, Station House Officer, Chiluatal police station, Neeraj Kumar Rai said.

"During an investigation and with the help of call records of the woman's mobile phone, it was found that she used to frequently talk to the man whose name in the Truecaller app was mentioned as Mehboob and the location as Karnataka," he said.

A case was lodged against the man on January 11, following which a three-member police team was sent to Karnataka to trace the man and the kidnapped woman, Rai said.

On the basis of these inputs, the woman's father lodged an FIR against the man and accused him of allegedly kidnapping his daughter and hiding his Muslim identity, he said.

The woman's father, who is a retired Army man, has mentioned in the FIR that last year the man had befriended his daughter through social media and wooed her on the pretext of providing a job.

Police said that everything would be clear once the accused and the kidnapped woman are traced.

The case was lodged under sections 366 (kidnapping, abduction or inducing woman to compel her into marriage ) and 363 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code, besides the new anti-conversion law of the Uttar Pradesh government, the SHO said.

The recently promulgated Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Ordinance, 2020, nullifies marriages if they are carried out for the sole purpose of religious conversion.