Prayagraj: “Without expressing any opinion and commenting further on the merits and demerits of the case, there are enough grounds for bail to be granted in this case,” is an oft-repeated line in orders granting bail to people arrested under Uttar Pradesh’s anti-conversion law, Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.
Of the 37 bail orders dated between January 2021 and June 2023 that Article 14 could access, district court judges granted bail in 29 (78.3%) cases.
Procedural lapses in filing first information reports (FIRs) to glaring loopholes in the investigation are among the reasons the district court judges cited while granting bail.
As Article 14 reported in the first of this two-part series, out of the 101 FIRs registered between December 2020 to June 2023 under the state’s controversial anti-conversion law, which we studied, 62% percent of complaints were found to be filed by third parties, parties not recognised as complainants under section 4 of the Act. As per the law, only a victim forced to undergo conversion or his/her blood relative can approach the police to register an FIR. The third part reports how Muslims are the main targets of “love jihad” accusations and are almost always refused bail by local courts.
The judicial scrutiny of FIRs and bail orders establishes how the law is being misused against the minority group of Christians in India’s largest state run by the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Some of the stark observations by the district court judges also include the fact that in some cases, the “accused are practising Hinduism as a religion”, raising questions on the intent behind the allegation of carrying out the religious conversion.
In eight cases where the bail application had been rejected, reasons cited by the district court judges included either recovery of the Bible, the prior criminal record of the accused, or fear of disrupting communal harmony.
Among other reasons cited while granting bail were the prosecution being unable to furnish any record regarding the prior criminal history of the accused, the gap between the date of incident and date of filing the FIR or time of incident not mentioned in the FIR, lack of statement by an independent witness verifying the prosecution’s version.
“Ultimately, such mindless exercises by the State and their police will have to be checked only by the trial magistrates and bail judges. One has to go through such a tortuous process to bring it to the knowledge of the misuse of the law,” Justice K Chandru, a former judge of Madras High Court, said,
This story was originally published in article-14.com. Read the full story here