By Omar Rashid
This is the fifth 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. Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4
New Delhi: Shakti Singh* remembers a police officer scolding his subordinates for hauling him into the lock up on the eve of Independence Day. “‘Why have you brought him in today,’ the police officer asked them at the police station on August 14,” says Singh, a resident of Madhya Pradesh.
A farmer from the Bhil tribe, 33-year-old Singh would go on to spend six days behind bars – from August 14 to 19, 2019 – on unlawful religious conversion charges. Even after being released on bail, he spent almost five years with the sword of the state’s contentious anti-conversion law dangling over his head, before a court in April 2024 acquitted him of all charges.
During the course of the trial, the case against him turned on its head after the prosecution witnesses, Singh’s aunt and cousin, contradicted the police version of the story. It turned out, as Singh claimed while speaking to The Wire, that they had been coerced to lodge a complaint against him by members of a right-wing group.
A First Information Report was lodged against him at the Kukshi police station in Dhar district on the eastern fringes of Madhya Pradesh on August 14, 2019. Singh was accused of luring and coercing his cousin Yuvraj Vaskel* and his family to convert to Christianity. On the said day, Singh says he had gone to his maternal aunt Kalibai’s house in Lohari village, 25 km from his village in Manawar tehsil, to participate in an aradhna (prayer) for Jesus Christ. Such prayer or healing sessions are a common practice in the hinterland states among those who believe in Christ, even if they may or may not be Christian on paper.
The FIR against him alleged that at around 11:30 am, he offered Vaskel and his family money as allurement and tried to pressure them to consider Jesus as their lord. The complaint says that Singh allegedly told them that their Hindu deities and goddesses, including Ram and Hanuman, were not their bhagwan (gods). Singh was also accused of burning a copy of the Hanuman Chalisa, a popular prayer recited by followers of Hindu deity Hanuman, kept at Vaskel’s house. The FIR further alleged that Singh removed all the idols and images of Hindu deities and goddesses kept in Vaskel’s house and stamped on them. Singh also allegedly insulted the Hindu faith by abusing Ram and threatened to kill Vaskel and his family when they refused to accept Christianity as their faith.
A complaint signed ‘under coercion’
Singh said none of this happened. In fact, he said that his cousin Vaskel did not even lodge a police complaint against him. He alleged that activists linked to a Hindutva group got to know about his regular visits from Manawar to his cousin’s house for prayers and barged into the house. Singh named a well-known outfit but since The Wire cannot confirm its complicity, we are choosing not to name it.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.