Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh): Men belonging to minority community are now turning into vigilantes, preventing their daughters from interacting with men of other faiths, police said.
Four such incidents have been reported in the past few days and the police says that there may be more.
These groups have targeted unmarried interfaith couples, mainly in public places. Men of other faiths have been shamed and their pictures uploaded on social media.
In Bareilly, a 24-year-old woman and her male friend, a railway staff, were allegedly harassed by some men on May 21, following a tip-off from the manager of a local hotel, where they were putting up. They shot videos of the woman and circulated it online with messages like “save your daughters from saffron jihad” and “find a boyfriend in your own community”.
An FIR under IPC sections 504 (intentional insult with intent to breach peace) and 67 of the IT Act was subsequently registered against the “activists”.
In another incident on May 21, an 18-year-old girl, shopping in Moradabad’s Bhojpur area with her male friend, was publicly harassed by another group. An FIR was registered after purported videos went viral.
Two similar incidents were reported on May 15 in Meerut and Muzaffarnagar.
The police spokesman said that so far, four persons have been arrested in Muzaffarnagar and one in Moradabad.
A local cleric, requesting anonymity, claimed, “Videos of right-wing group leaders asking people of their community to change the religion of our daughters by marrying them have been circulating online. Those obeying their call will get around Rs four lakh for each conversion.”
The cleric added: “After these videos surfaced, daughters from our community were targeted and their faith changed. We now want to stem this practice and save our daughters.”
Additional Director General, Bareilly zone, Prem Chand Meena, said, “Isolated incidents have been reported where interfaith couples were targeted by minority groups and we have acted in every case as per merit. So far, we have not found any concrete evidence to suggest that all these incidents are inter-connected.”
–IANS