By Omar Rashid
New Delhi: A court in Uttar Pradesh has sentenced a South-Indian-origin couple to five years in prison for trying to induce Hindu Dalits to convert to Christianity. The criminal case was lodged in 2023 on the complaint of an office-bearer of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
Notably, the special court in Ambedkar Nagar convicted the couple despite the Allahabad high court’s ruling 16 months ago that the BJP leader, on whose compliant the FIR was lodged, was not an aggrieved person in the case and, therefore, was not a competent person to lodge a complaint under UP’s anti-conversion law.
The Wire has a copy of the Ambedkar Nagar court’s 22-page verdict.
On January 22, Ram Vilas Singh, special judge SC/ST Act, sentenced Jose Papachen and his wife Sheeja to five years in prison and fined them Rs 25,000 each after convicting them under Section 5 (1) of the Uttar Pradesh Prohibition of Unlawful Conversion of Religion Act, 2021.
Judge Singh held the couple guilty of inducing poverty-struck Dalits in Shahpur Firoz village in Ambedkar Nagar in eastern UP to “mass” convert them from Hindu to Christian. The court said the couple used to impart lessons from the Bible, propagate about Jesus Christ, distribute religious books, organise bhandaras (feasts) on Christmas and offer money and other allurements to the Dalits and ask them to follow Jesus in bid to convert them.
Papachen and Sheeja, who live in Madhya Pradesh and are originally from Kerala, could not explain to the court why they were visiting the village.
The FIR was lodged in January 2023 at Jalalpur police station after BJP district secretary Chandrika Prasad alleged that Papachen and Sheeja had been visiting a Dalit basti in Shahpur Firoz; they would visit the house of Viphla, a Dalit woman, where they offered allurements to convert the Dalit villagers who would gather there. Prasad himself belongs to a Dalit community.
This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here.